Knowledge is power
The phrase, knowledge is power, is a well-known mantra. One that, for some, is unquestioned. It was Sir Roger Bacon who first wrote ipsa scientia potestas est in his Meditations. But much earlier, the Book of Proverbs attests to the strength of the wise man and the man with knowledge. The voices are forceful.
One can never know enough!
You’ve already got your doctorate, go ahead and do a law degree!
Trust the science!
There’s much to commend about the immediacy of answers to all questions and the availability of information. The list of sites offering excellent free online courses in music, art, the Old and New Testaments, philosophy, and a myriad of subjects is almost endless. For those who prefer listening to reading, podcasts cover subjects from healthy eating to Lin Wilder’s latest book.
What could go wrong with our desire to know and understand?
Father Paul Scalia explains:
The Breastplate of Saint Patrick contains a curious prayer invoking God’s power “against every knowledge that blinds the soul of man.” Sometimes it’s called the knowledge that “corrupts,” “binds,” or “defiles.” Whatever the translation, the point remains the same and runs contrary to our culture’s way of thinking. We live by the silly, simplistic notion that “Knowledge is power.” We can’t imagine a bad kind of knowledge.
Saint Patrick knew better. He knew our need to be defended against that kind of “knowledge” that not only fails to help but in fact threatens us. It is a knowledge that promises sight but delivers blindness.
The right not to know
Since I’m an admirer of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, I’ve used excerpts from his speeches and books for countless articles. Many of his comments are urgently relevant, although they were penned decades ago. This one: the right not to know, is another of the Russians’ remarks that seems to leap off the page and into our living rooms.
In 1978, former Soviet political prisoner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gave a speech at Harvard University entitled, “A World Split Apart,” in which he spoke about individual and social fragmentation. In his assessment, a significant cause of individual fragmentation is the spurious idea that “everyone is entitled to know everything.” In reality, Solzhenitsyn remarked, “People also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk.” [italics mine.]
I’d not read the address, A World Split Apart, before. I’ve embedded it here because the ten typed pages contain a wealth of provocative and challenging material.
“Harvard’s motto is “VERITAS.” Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us as soon as our concentration begins to flag, all the while leaving the illusion that we are continuing to pursue it. This is the source of much discord. Also, truth seldom is sweet; it is almost invariably bitter. A measure of truth is included in my speech today, but I offer it as a friend, not as an adversary….
It is feasible and easy everywhere to undermine administrative power and it has in fact been drastically weakened in all Western countries. The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so
much human rights as human obligations. On the other hand, destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example against the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. This is all considered to be part of freedom and to be counterbalanced, in theory, by the young people’s right not to look and not to accept.Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil….
Solzhenitsyn ends with these chilling words:
“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.”
If the goal is power then…
“If what you want is power, then that makes sense, Lin.” Kathy sipped her chardonnay and regarded me soberly.
My friend Kathy was a clinical specialist; her specialty was in psych, not critical care like mine. Her remark was a response to my passionate soliloquy about the recent and needless death of a young woman in the ICU of the hospital where we both worked. The patient’s private physician never answered frantic calls to his pager, home, or office. I knew exactly what she needed, but lacked the license to supply the simple life-saving medication. I was angry and wanted to make sure I’d never be that helpless again. And so I was seriously considering medical school.
Kathy’s comment felt like a slap.
Is that why I want to do this?
Am I after power?
Even to my atheistic ears, the perils of pursuing power for its own sake terrified me.
I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh I will put my spirit within you so that you walk in my statutes, observe my ordinances, and keep them.
“This is the covenant I will establish with them after those days, says the Lord: ‘I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them upon their minds,’” he also says: “Their sins and their evildoing I will remember no more.”l
When philosophy gets off its knees
In a lovely article, The Dark Wood of Philosophy, author Joseph Wood quotes his mentor, recently deceased James Patrick.
“He warned me, gently but clearly, that when philosophy gets off its knees, it gets into trouble. “That’s a pithy way of saying that when philosophy, the use of human reason to know the whole truth of ‘“’what is,” divorces itself from faith, bad things happen.”
The Dark Wood of Philosophy
Using examples of several known Catholics, like Dante and Heidegger, the author reminds his readers that philosophy means the love of wisdom. But when the love of God above all else gets lost, those splendid intellects lose their way.
Dante isn’t bedtime reading. But the words he writes upon his descent into the Inferno do not feel irrelevant to our times. Rather, they pierce:
Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost.
Ah, how hard it is to tell
The nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh –
the very thought of it renews my fear!
It is so bitter death is hardly more so.…
How I came there I cannot really tell,
I was so full of sleep
When I forsook the one true way.
It feels these days that everyone has lost their way. Wars and politicians rage. Predictions of descent into worldwide devastation emanate from all sides.
“Have we finally done it?
Have we finally managed to ignite a conflagration that will end the world?”
And yet, on this third Sunday of Lent, we are given the immensely rich Gospel reading of Christ and the Samaritan woman.
“Do you not say, ‘In four months the harvest will be here’?
I tell you, look up and see the fields ripe for the harvest.
The reaper is already receiving payment
and gathering crops for eternal life,
so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together.
For here the saying is verified that ‘One sows and another reaps.’
I sent you to reap what you have not worked for;
others have done the work,
and you are sharing the fruits of their work.”
Last year, over 10 million joined the Catholic Church. In our diocese of San Antonio, Texas, 3000 people will become Catholic during the Easter Vigil Mass in a few weeks. It’s unlikely these numbers are unique but rather are repeated throughout the country and the world.
You see evil growing instead of weakening? Do not worry, Close your eyes and say to me with faith: “Thy will be done, You take care of it.” I say to you that I will take care of it, and that I will intervene as does a doctor and I will accomplish miracles when they are needed. Do you see that the sick person is getting worse? Do not be upset, but close your eyes and say “You take care of it.” I say to you that I will take care of it, and that there is no medicine more powerful than my loving intervention. By my love, I promise this to you. O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything! (10 times)
