Day #84 - Knowledge is power

I have a good friend who once had a tagline on his emails that read something like; "knowledge is not like money - you won't have any less if you give some away!". That always struck me as a pretty cool maxim but it is remarkable how many folks out there genuinely hide knowledge and resources for fear of loss. This sort of behaviour can be encountered in many fields of human existence. It is not uncommon coming up to exam time at the university for some students to hide books or remove pages from books to thwart the progress of others. I remember years ago I tried to get some help from a student at a college I attended but he just blanked me in the end. The preamble to it was a lot of BS and excuses about his availability for WEEKS but when it came down to it he just couldn't bring himself to help. Idiot. I also experienced the same sort of thing some time later at university. I really couldn't understand it, but then you need to be just like that to understand it and have some perspective. Like the old saying goes; "It takes one to know one!" I do not know if I really like that oft used retort but what I like even less is that sort of lobsterism.

When I was younger I used to do a lot of hitch-hiking around the country. I used to just take off with a destination in mind and hit the road. I used to find it pretty easy but back then people were more willing to help someone with a lift. Not so these days where giving someone a lift is tantamount to throwing money away. It seems to be a widely pervasive problem in modern Ireland, the whole "why should I?" thing. People feel that their quality of life is likely to be lessened by helping another. People are more likely to do something nice for others if there is some kind of assurance that they are likely to be SEEN by others to be performing some act of "selfless generosity" or "kind benevolence". If these folks are unlikely to be seen being virtuous then they are unlikely to be SEEN being virtuous. Years ago in Ireland you used to see a lot of these type of people at Sunday Mass, right up the front, praying overtly and making exaggerated gestures of piety and devotion. These people are of course, hypocrites.

I think that I am likely to spend some time thinking of ways to test the particular theory that people are more likely to be virtuous/generous/benevolent provided OTHERS get to see it. OR a mechanism exists where OTHERS will get to learn of the "virtuous" persons acts of "goodness". It is the modern preoccupation with OTHERS that has led to the cult of celebrity, the proliferation of "talent shows" and "reality" television. Strangely there are few things as overt as someone pretending to NOT LOOK or SEE YOU, be they the individual in a car with their eyes firmly fixed ahead or the vain and pretty person that always has one eye on the mirror. This is the practical, real time manifestation of LIVING a LIE.

This is certainly what Sartre was talking about when he asserted "L'en fer des autres" ("Hell is other people!"). But for a moment let us return to the guarding of knowledge, what is the "other" driven reason that prevents ordinary people from sharing knowledge? It is something that can be examined or scrutinised against the perspective of foresight combined with fear. People are afraid to share because they fear that at some point "down the road" that there is a greater statistical likelyhood that SOMEONE ELSE will bask in the glorious recognition provided by OTHERS. That some less deserving individual will attract the spotlight. This is one of the signs of a true lobster - someone that cannot bear to witness the success of another. James Joyce called these people "begrudgers". Lobsterism is clearly nothing new.