This Just In: Knowledge ISN'T Power

Decartes may have had the best of intentions when he concluded that “knowledge is power,” but that doesn’t absolve him from the fact that he was utterly wrong. Ironically, he lacked a piece of knowledge that would have informed him, fully, that knowledge isn’t power at all.

Now THAT’S ironic, isn’t it? Much more than rain on your wedding day or some good advice that you just didn’t take.

What Decartes “missed” was that power doesn’t come from knowledge; all that comes from knowledge, really, is fear and confusion. Hence, the most knowledgeable people in the world are usually the most frightened (just walk into a hospital or university and stare into the faces of the people who work in them – if these places aren’t terror factories, I don’t know what is).

The plain – and rather ordinary – reality is that CLARITY is power. Clarity is the ability to understand a situation…well, clearly. Sometimes knowledge is helpful to achieve that clarity, but only sometimes – and then, when it is, it’s not totally helpful. Knowledge is based on memory, and memory is always based on the past. Either facts that have been stored and remembered, or “projected” into the future in terms of probabilities.

Clarity is real power, because clarity is an authentic response to reality. Clarity doesn’t bring old, dusty facts to a fresh, new situation. Yes, it may refer to facts – but it doesn’t depend on them exclusively.

For example, if you read this post ONLY through knowledge, you will constantly be assessing this with what you think you know. And that process – that constant assessment – will compel you to miss what I’m trying to say. You may catch a small piece of it, but you’ll miss the heart; the essence. You’ll be filtering this through knowledge, and knowledge is never of the present moment – never of the now. Knowledge is always of the past – always. Knowledge cannot LIVE in the present, because knowledge is absolutely derived from mind, and mind cannot live in the present. Mind lives in the past and in thee future – to “places” that don’t exist. Mind cannot live in the now; and hence, knowledge cannot live in the now.

And if knowledge can’t live in the now…how can it be power!? How can living in either the past or the future – two NON-places – be powerful? It is actually the very definition of weakness. The present contains power – and to SEE the present, you must be clear; clear of the past, clear of the future.