Young Philosopher's Society

By Jasmeet Randhawa

You know nothing. That statement, may seem false, but is factually true (within a rounding error). For everyone. Don’t believe me?

Consider what you know, what knowledge you posses about the world around you, and you’ll quickly find out, that you don’t know more than you do know.

When you wake up in the morning and brush your teeth, do you know how your toothpaste was made? If there was a global toothpaste shortage, would you be able to make it on your own?

You take a shower, do you know how the water system in your house works? Even a little part of it? Do you even know where the water in your house comes from? Where, which exact location, does it go when you are done with it?

The clothes on your back, would you be able to make them? Would you be able to recreate them? Failing that, do you know who made them? How they got here from where they were made?

You eat your breakfast. Could you grow any of the food on your plate? Half of you, can’t even cook it. Could you even harvest it in the proper manner? Do you even know what food you could grow in your local habitat?

Fire up your laptop. Could you recreate any of the technology that goes into making it? If it randomly stopped working (and turning it on and off did not work), could you fix it without sitting for hours on tech support?

Go to your school, or your job. Could you build the building you work in? Hell, could you even build the desk you work on from scratch?

Go to the supermarket. Do you know how the payment system works? What happens when you tap your credit card? What happens when you use ApplePay?

Even if you answered yes to one of those questions, you definitely did not answer yes to all of them. None of these are high-level rocket science questions: they are questions about the daily activities that you take part in, things that you take for granted. These are just the obvious ones, we are leaving out countless little things that you take for granted.

“But Jazzy, I know other things, about how science and math works! “

Oh do you? Tell me, intrepid scientists, can you explain the higher dimensional supergravity concept? Can you explain the Kaluza-Klein theory? Can you explain Riemannian geometry? No? I thought you knew you science?

So tell, yourself, what do you know?

Is it some science or math concept taught in class? Ask yourself, do you really even know all there is to know on that very specific, very small part of the larger scientific treasure trove of knowledge? No. How could you? Even specialists with PhDs are still investigating most of scientific theory and it’s applications to this day.

Is it some minute detail about your personal culture? If so, do you know where that detail came from? The factors that influenced it? How long ago it was formed? Hell, do you even know the name of your great-grandfather?

Okay so. You know nothing. Or at least, you know a very small amount and you don’t know a lot.

What is the solution?

Some may say: try to learn more (in fact, I’d wager that is what you thought that was going to be the message of this article). What do you mean more? “More” is a very vague term. How much more? More of what? More of biology? Of physics? Or maybe anthropology, sociology, physiology, kinesiology, nanotribology, odonatology, molinology, pedology, ecogeomorphology, vexillology, somatology, or another one of the hundreds of -ologies that you can find some poor sod pursuing a PhD in (here’s a list!).

The situation becomes even more bleak, when you realize, some people spend their whole lives studying one very specific sub-strata of a given field and still don’t know everything there is to know about it.

So not only do you know nothing. You will always know nothing. On a rounding error, you are a complete idiot when it comes to 99.9% of human knowledge.

If the amount of question marks present in this article haven’t completed bungled your mind, you may recall that the title of this article had a much more positive message than the one I had presented: how you can understand everything. What did I mean?

In the last 10 minutes of your life that you have wasted reading this essay, you now know that you know nothing.

What we have achieved together, is a concept known as Socratic Ignorance.

Socratic Ignorance can be best described as the idea of the enlightened fool. We all know next to nothing, we are very much limited in what we can know, let alone what we do know, but there is one truth, one concept, that if we understand, gives us, an incredible advantage: knowing that we are stupid.

When we know that we don’t know, we can understand the world differently, and can choose to know more about the things we believe we want to know more about it.

Knowing that you don’t know where your water comes from, can inspire you to look into it right now, but it can also garner respect for those who do. Knowing you don’t know your TV works, puts you a step ahead of the idiot who thinks he is so smart because he understands Pythagorean’s Theorem or has some fancy degree, but when he can’t change the channel, slaps the remote as if that will fix it.

Knowing that you don’t know much about the world around you, also compels you to ask more questions, to be able to at least understand some tidbits of the world that might be useful to you.

The point of Socratic Ignorance, is not the self-loathing that comes with the understanding of your own finite ability, but rather, the courage to devote yourself despite it, and to respect those who know what you don’t.

It challenges you to consider your own actions, and your own morality, given what little you know, how do you know that what you believe is right, is actually right? Are you even a fraction of the good you believe you are? Before you answer that questions, consider how those who you have hurt, or those who have hurt you would answer it. Whatever the response may be, be reassured to know, that a singular choice can transform what you are in the current moment into something greater, all you have to do, is recognize that there is room for improvement.

There is a better way to look at the world than that of the conceited, arrogant, degree-wielding “genius”. It is the path, of the life-long learner.

When you were young, a baby, everything fascinated you. You would pull on the leaves of trees and tear out grass to inspect it, or just feel it beneath your fingers. You would stare at things as long as you liked, taking in every detail as you tried to make sense of it. You looked to the world, wondering as to it’s true nature. You didn’t know, so you explored. Somewhere along the way, you forgot that feeling, replacing it with the dull tones of “I know all I need to know” or “I know too much” or “I don’t care to know”. I invite you, dear reader, to have the eyes of children once more, and look to the world as you once did.