Growth in Knowledge

For me, there are two ways to grow in knowledge; One is by failure, and the other one is by small incremental steps.

I’m blind to foresee the future events that can have devastating effects on me. The lack of fear of the possible dire consequences of my actions is not that I’m brave, but because I can’t foresee it would happen. In my mind, there is a single outcome of my actions, which have no alternative. I’m blind to the alternative, which I would consider. When nature decides the outcome, and it shows me the alternative outcome is for me, it surprises me and have devastating effects. This is the cause of failure to me, which happens again and again.

I face failures all the time. I have assumptions about some objects and I would carry out its assumption until I meet a point where It contradicts with my experience. In that case, I revise my assumption about the objects which then I believe strongly as I did in the previous assumption. The process may be called the lessons of failures. The lesson is not yet positive or evident that is indeed expanding my knowledge of the true nature of the objects. It is only evident and solid in retrospect and in the distant future. As an example, a failure can cause me revising an assumption to a more ridiculous assumption which causes more failures in the future, and eventually enough failures as they are handed to me by the nature, that I would realize a true assumption of the object.

The other way for me to growth is incremental steps. By “Incremental step”, I mean a smallest increasing in growth. For me, it is clear that I’m ignorant of so many things [1]. The conclusion is reached after so many failures of knowing objects. The good news is that I know that I’m ignorant which is prerequisite of expanding my knowledge, that is to make me less ignorant. The incremental step is what I have taken to increase my knowledge about objects. To me, it does not matter if I can ever reach a state of knowledge where I can be free of ignorance. What it matters is that I can increase my knowledge just a little bit. However small that step is, the cumulative steps would eventually amount to many. A small step is not so easily in expanding knowledge. I do not know what I don’t know, and for what I already know, I would not know it consciously if I’m not making an effort. There is just so much I can spend on contemplate each day. The energy I can spend is finite. With limited finite energy, if I can make a small step, which is not always possible to do, I can accumulate an amount of knowledge that I would be surprised in retrospect.

[1] this is my realization recently, after I know more about my nature. For exmaple, the single mindedness of seeing a object, and the failures of so many things.