Knowledge is evil

Evil has always been with us. With knowledge, there is not more evil, only more sophisticated forms of evil!



Do you know the expression, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing?" To a primitive, each little bit of learning, without the context of an overall knowledge of the world, was probably fraught with anxiety and fear. To them, it would not be beyond the realm of possibility that they would consider that knowledge "evil".

I have always thought of that a bit differently. That knowing a little about something can allow you to do stupid things because you can't adequately think through the consequences. If a child knows that turning the key in the ignition will start the car and placing it in drive will allow the car to go, it doesn't mean the child can drive, but the limited knowledge the child has will allow him to get himself into a serious wreck.

Re: Knowledge is evil


I always thought that this was a way for them to discourage people from asking questions about the teachings of the bible and just accept them blindly.

Kicky- IMO people who look to the Bible for absolute truths, are not the sort of individuals who care to think for themselves. It is much easier for some to accept an entire body of knowledge wholesale, than to go to the trouble of having to think through and make their own judgments on individual issues.

in a sense.
knowledge/technology has led to easier living and higher survival rates.
the resulting overpopulation and great rifts in quality of life between the rich and the poor (relatively) is what causes indifference and hatred to surface so easily. we see others living physically well while morally wrong, and have expectations we "deserve" the same.
it's not new, it's just more widespread because there are literally more of us here now every year. people used to sleep with their doors unlocked, but they also used to hang blacks and kill indians like rodents. be careful about romanticizing the past.

Re: Knowledge is evil


The Garden of Eden is the planet Earth before any human thought existed.

The people who wrote the Bible must have known that there was a time on this planet before humans were aware; we were just naked animals in the bliss of ignorance, unaware and unconcerned, like all the other animals.

But they also realized that there must have been a time when awareness came to us, like the taste of an apple of knowledge, so they created a story about it.

Good and Evil are concepts which arise from our ability to judge; from awareness and knowledge.

We were forced from "The Garden" because the very nature of what we had become destroyed the innocence of the Garden. We experience this in our own lives as we grow from children to adults, leaving the garden of our youth behind with each inevitible thought we think.

It's interesting to me that most people prefer to think that we were thrown out of Eden, when in fact, we simply woke up and recognized the dream for what it was.

rosborne:
interesting view because i tend to think the modern mindset is the dream. we are living within the constructs of our great mind-plan and not paying attention to the very real consequences of our actions, on each other or on the planet. like driving down the road using a map but never looking up through the windshield for real feedback we can steer by.
what am i talking about? the lack of humanity we are teaching our children, the planet we are leaving for our grandchildren, the termination or dilution of diverse religions and cultures that have allowed us to become who we are today (as if we'd spit on the face of those whose shoulders we stand upon).
this is the dream we need to wake up from. accept the real with open eyes and admit that whether or not you believe in an omniscient god, there is certainly no such thing as the omniscient human.

note: i am using *you* generically

Hi BlissfulIgnorance,



When Loren Eiselty called Mankind, "The Dream Animal", he was referring to our tendency to pursue a life full of actions which have very little direct connection to physical necessities. Instead, we worry about education, politics, social interactions, and entertainment. But the type of dream I was talking about is the "Eden" which exists in our minds when we recognize the innocence of a world without judgement and awareness (Ignorance is Bliss after all ) There was such a time on this planet, before our ancestors had evolved enough brain capacity to reach the level of awareness which we now posess, and I think the authors of The Garden of Eden story knew this and were telling us this. They recognized that it was our knowledge of Good and Evil which ended the innocence of those pre-thought eons.



But we are paying attention. You are aware of it, I'm aware of it, forums are choked with discussions of it. The problem isn't that we are unaware, the problem is that we are entrenched in a system which has momentum and is difficult to stop.

One thing is for certain, we can not go back to the Garden of our innocence. Our awareness has unleashed the Djinn from the bottle, and there's no putting it back. Our only choice now is to use that Djinn to shape a new world. Luckily, there are no rules on what is right and wrong, nothing to judge us except ourselves. Survival or Extinction are our only choices, and only our desires make one more "right" than the other.

Oh, and welcome to A2K

i agree pretty much with all this, rosborne, just semantics as far as which is the dream and which is reality.
as for our awareness, i agree you and i may be, but many people around me do not seem to be and do not even want to talk about it. i can start a conversation much faster about that great new car or investment opportunity, than one about urban sprawl or public domain. the former are more day-to-day and personal, and i think many people are just living too comfortably to give the bigger picture much thought. which goes back to the origin of this thread - technology leading to 'evil'.
many people will drive up to the mountains for a day, but only a few will get involved when those mtns are about to be mined or logged. nobody wants their teenage daughter to get pregnant, but porn rules the internet. you and i are aware, but those in decision-making capacity don't seem to be. that's why i laugh when people talk about conspiracy theories; not only is there no *evil master plan*, there's not even a *good master plan*. nobody's in charge and we end up making global decisions based on personal agenda.
instead of thinking in terms of right or wrong, i see it as more long-term vs short-term health (ours, animal, plant). it may be fun to eat french fries but it's not healthy. it may be fun to drive around in oversize SUV's but it's not healthy. it may be fun to buy a new single-family house just built on the ever-expanding edge of suburbia but it's not healthy. et cetera. that is just MHO and based on my own experiences in Atlanta.

thanks for the welcome. i'm just bored at work and found this forum. good stuff!

Knowledge is not evil. How can one live rightly without the 'knowledge' of what's right and what's wrong?

Moreover it is how one uses certain type of 'knowledge' that is crucial. If one were to use it for bad purposes then it is not the knowledge that is evil it is the intent of the person. Doctors who uses knowledge to help people fight diseases and that type of thing, is using 'knowledge' for good purposes and their intent is good. Thus, knowledge is a neutral thing.

Ray, you presuppose that fighting disease is a good thing. yes, the doctors' intention is probably good - that is, to make a person healthy - but is the overall effect good for the entire world?
if every animal, tree, and plant in the world were continually mended and made to live as long a life as possible, we can see that it would quickly become a dysfunctional world.
by not accepting the season of death as natural, we fail to make room for our children and fail to participate in the life cycle. the reason we don't accept is that we have the knowledge to fight disease, but not the grace to accept it's purpose. while knowledge may not be evil (what is evil?), it appears to be unhealthy for life as a whole.
millions of years in ignorance created flourishing life, where the biomass per acre could be measured in hundreds of tons; what do you think our present sophistication will create?

Evil is not an inherent condition of nature. It is a judgment imposed on the world by us humans.

Good and Evil only exist because we humans label things as such.



Disease is life (virus, bacteria, cancer, etc). In declaring that disease is unhealthy for life, you have simply passed judgement on the value of one form of life over another.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer humans over bacteria any day, but that doesn't mean that I can declare one more inherently good, or evil, than the other.

The nature of "good" and "evil", and reality itself is at least somewhat on point. I've spoken, at length, on these threads regarding the illusory nature of perceptual reality. To find my views read almost any of the threads where Buddhism is being discussed. Today, however, I'm going to try addressing the topic more directly.

What does the term "evil" mean? Is it that which leads people to envy, anger, jealousy, greed, and hate? What is it about these, and other similar thoughts/beliefs that makes us want to condemn them? Is it not that these are the sort of thoughts/beliefs that glorify the self and selfishness at the expense of others? When we place self above those around us, are we not much more likely to cause them to suffer? If we harm those around us in the end do we not ourselves end up suffering as well?

So what is it that causes us to fall into those ways of thinking and believing that is harmful? Is it now self-awareness? Being aware we look upon the world as filled with choices, and not un-naturally we choose those things that give pleasure rather than pain. Eat the wrong mushroom and be sick, or pick the right one and savor the flavor. We know that being alone is dangerous, so we prize the nurturing of our family, and our group. We learned that what is "good" from them is "good" for us. Society adopted norms long before we climbed out of the trees and ventured out onto the savanna. That was the beginning of knowledge.

Before we had words, we had self-awareness and choice. Knowledge was minimal, so was live less filled with suffering in those times? Did we not still become injured and ill? Did we not follower our loved ones into the grave? We hungered, and cowered shivering with fear and anxiety at the sound of predators prowling the dark. We sought prominence in our group so that we would eat and have the most desirable mates. We killed to avoid being killed, or to extend our territory and security. One way to self-gratification (the avoidance of suffering) was to gain more knowledge, to become wise.

As the Ages rolled by, the store of knowledge increased. What didn't change was desire to avoid suffering. Knowing that we learned to pursue pleasure and those things we imagined would protect us from pain, sickness, and death. We sought the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of Eternal Youth, great wealth and power. The pursuit of knowledge actually did reduce suffering. Medical science prolongs life and has banished some of the most terrible of diseases. Technology keeps our micro-climate comfortable, and has banished the specter of famine in the developed world. The acquisition of knowledge extends the range of our choices, and improves the potential for "good" (the reduction of suffering). Knowledge has opened the doors of opportunity, has increased leisure, and made it possible for more people to pursue wisdom.

What hasn't changed is the idea that we, individually, are the center of the universe. What WE believe and feel is the most important thing. We build continually upon the notion that self is supreme, and that inevitably continues suffering both for ourselves and for the world at large.

But that isn't the whole story, is it? People do think of others, and extend the hand of charity. Brave men do throw themselves onto hand grenades to save their buddies. Individuals live modest lives so that they can share with those who have less. The rich do donate much of their wealth to battle disease and hunger. Nations go to war to liberate the oppressed. There are wise men and women in every village and town around the world. The number of Buddhists has grown, perhaps not so fast as the Abrahamic faiths, and with the spread of Buddhism the number of those who experience Ultimate Reality has increased. It is possible to understand the nature of suffering, and to transcend it. It is possible to shuck off the self, at least for a time in perceptual reality.

You would be correct if there were no God, which is a point still up for much debate.

There is also debate about whether or not viruses are alive.

Correct. I should preface all my comments with "in my opinion".



Correct again, but my point remains the same.

rosborne, you did not read the sentence correctly:

"while knowledge may not be evil (what is evil?), it appears to be unhealthy for life as a whole. "

*it* was not [disease] as you quoted me, but [knowledge].
you are clarifying a point that i already agree with you on, that disease is a form of life. that was the point of that post.



btw Asherman, nice post, right on. i extend that thinking to the point where we are too focused on ending suffering (awareness of suffering coming from our ability to see ourselves in third party, ie imagination), but in thinking we are ending it, our limited scope does not perceive we have only shifted it to other beings. for example, we like our speedy cars, abundant food, and ever-available electricity, without understanding (caring?) about the impacts made to land, air, water, and - probably most hidden - our social interactions, individually and within the community. we are no longer part of the tribe, we are part of the machine.
all IMHO and open for refute or ridicule.

You're right. I misread your comment. Sorry about that.

Knowledge of and by itself is not evil. How we implement it is. To use a simplistic phrase (from Jurassic Park) the scientists were so concerned with could they do it they lost sight of should they do it. You would think by now such a cogent entity as ourselves we would have learned not to kill each other. What good does it do to condemn the destruction of the Brazilian Mato Grosso and then put in motion the comparative destruction of Alaska. Corporate managers disregarding any ethic but the bottom line know they can blissfully disregard right and wrong and throw money and influence at politicians to pave the way to their view of accomplishments. Conscience appears to be a very malleable thing.

???
But you require knowledge also to make that assertment and do something about it. We know now how pollution is caused and this is something crucial in solving the problem. "know" the problem and solve it, not "ignore" and solve...



I'm sorry, how is this worse than letting living things die? As a whole, I do not see it as a dysfunctional world if such an undertaking is possible.
If you assert that the continuation of life is 'good', then letting things live, and live to the fullest would not interfere with the continuation, but it enhances it.

How is a person living healthy not "good overall"?



99% of species in the history of the Earth has gone extinct because of this "ignorance".



True, but the distinct difference between the bacteria and humans are that we are conscious and rational.


I disagree. We label things as "good" or "evil" to certain things, but even though the words are tools, the inherent meaning behind the words are real.