Forbidden knowledge: A Social Issue
When I first started my journey to becoming what I reckoned to be at that time the ideal liver of a well-lived life, one of the things that most baffled me was the condemnation I received from those around me for so-called “Forbidden Knowledge”. In short, this knowledge was such that, if understood at any depth, could be used to hurt or manipulate people for ones own benefit. Many of my peers slandered this knowledge as “Better off not knowing”.
I can tell you now, had I listened to these foolish dissuasions I would not be living quite near the same level of joyous, peaceful, everyday mundane as I am now.
Many crossroads in my life have been marked by a fundamental difference in thinking between myself and those around me. Here, the main assumption harbored by my peers was that “Given the chance to gain more, humans will invariably do bad to one another”, and my, slightly different assumption and general worldview had been slightly more well-advised. In contrast to my peers, I believed “Ideas can never be blamed for an action”. In my eyes, whether or not a human did bad was entirely the fault of that human, and so whatever I decided I would learn, the onus was entirely on me were it to end up for the worst.
To this day, I have struggled immensely to communicate the above to those who would object. As clear as it seems to me, I’m constantly bombarded with pseudo-philosophical shortcomings, such as “What if those ideas convinced you to do bad and you couldn’t find information to persuade you to the contrary”, to which I would constantly retort, “That only applies if you don’t have a clear and well-formulated inner distinction between good and bad”. However, recently I have come to a quite reasonable one-liner which perfectly communicates the point I have been struggling to convey:
In Spiderman (Yes), Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben is known for saying “With great power comes great responsibility”. Well, if that’s true, then no power means no responsibility! Don’t you want to have responsibility over your life, your career, your relationships, and your loved ones?
If you can forgive the leading question, most people immediately understand my thinking when faced with this statement. All it was ever really about was to see my own life improve based on my own actions. I believe that sentiment is one that can be shared by everyone.
How Knowledge of People Changed my Life
I have been told on occasion that it is indeed extremely creepy how I seem to know exactly what those around me are thinking at all times. I have also been told that it’s incredibly inspiring how much focus I expend on monitoring the wellbeing of those around me. At time of writing I can confidently say that whenever I walk into a room, those who know me smile.
Part of this is due to small bits of knowledge I have acquired from my various delves into “Forbidden Knowledge”; such things as “when someone’s eye moves into their bottom-right hand corner, (your left if you’re looking straight at them) it means there’s something on their mind”. Being able to quickly assess if someone feels uncomfortable or anxious is a trait which will take you far if you apply it correctly. Indeed, if you decide to use this power for evil, you very well could: playing on people’s anxieties and driving them insane. However, you could also be the support that they need in that moment, were you to choose such. On the flip side, if you have no idea what your peers are thinking or feeling, you are essentially leaving your relationships entirely up to an uninformed garble of miscommunication and guesswork. In this state, you simply can not be held as responsible for the relationships in your life, which is as much a tragedy as it is unfair towards those who put effort into your well-being.
