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A little knowledge is a dangerous thing
By Wan Lixin |
May 26, 2010, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
ON Saturday my son paid his first visit to the elementary school he will attend this September.
Asked how he liked his classroom, he said he was glad there are no beds - he's a hypnophobe - but sad he didn't see any toys.
The 7-year-old boy was obviously unprepared for the next decade and beyond when indoctrination in formal knowledge will be a very high priority, so high that his entire worth will be measured by his success in mastering facts.
How efficient he is in assimilating knowledge will be a good predictor of his future productivity, or more accurately, his future earning power.
For that reason alone knowledge is cast in an aura of sanctity.
When Christian philosophers delved into the mysteries of the universe during the Renaissance, they have been motivated by the desire to prove God as the "first cause" or "prime mover," an inquiry which many people today would dismiss as superstitious.
We believe our faith in GDP, the market, and money is more rational.
Francis Bacon said, "A little learning is a dangerous thing," and there is ample evidence that our learning is more limited than we presume it to be.
Wang Min, vice-minister of the Ministry of Land and Resources, said on Sunday that the Three Gorges Dam area is currently facing a "grim situation" in trying to prevent and control potential danger.
Xinhua reported that since the water level of the Three Gorges Reservoir rose to 175 meters last September, 97 sections of bank have collapsed and 2,000 people have been forced to relocate.
This is sending a cautionary message to other attempts to dam rivers and lakes.
For instance, public uproar has, miraculously, forced local officials to reconsider the proposal to dam the 3,500-square-kilometer Poyang Lake in Jiangxi Province.
Xinhua reported that China's largest freshwater lake has been threatened by "receding water levels since 2003 due to climate change, human activities, decreased flows from upstream rivers, and the start of water storage at the Three Gorges Dam."
We have learned the simple art of damming, digging, drilling and paving over, without acquiring the more complex arts of mitigating the destructive potential of our handiwork.
More than a month after the oil rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, the ruptured well is still gushing oil, with the massive slick already reaching the American shoreline and wetlands.
And there seems to be precious little that can be done to contain the spill.
BP knows how to drill a hole in the earth's crust, but not how to stanch the wound.
Drastic measures are being used in the cleanup, such as burning off oil and using chemical dispersants, but it is warned that the cleanup itself could do more harm than good.
More sensible is the understanding that the only viable option is to take advantage of nature's healing power, and wait for weather and natural microbes to break down the oil.
Out of sight
Such thoughtlessness and blindness seem to characterize all human endeavors, particularly when there is huge energy to be tapped.
Thanks to nuclear scientists, we are now living with arsenals of nukes capable of blowing up the earth many times over, and feel very arrogant about our power.
As depletion of fossil fuels is inevitable, many have been flirting with the idea of nuclear energy, holding it up as clean, safe, and sustainable.
According to Deb Katz, executive director of the Citizens Awareness Network, alongside America's rivers and lakes, on ocean shores and tidal bays, "nearly 63,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste - which remains dangerous for longer than recorded history - sits in 'temporary' storage."
Some of the waste has been there for decades, and will remain for decades longer.
Like so many of society's waste problems, out-of-sight, out-of-mind has become a de facto "solution."
Since the economic crisis, many local governments in China have been providing incentives for private car buyers.
The policy gives local GDP a strong boost, ranking China's as No. 1 in car consumption worldwide.
You can derive whatever amount of satisfaction from that glowing figure, if you can get away from the perpetual noise, horn-blaring, exhaust fumes, traffic snarls, and steady erosion of neighborhood, nature and public space.
In our eagerness to urbanize our environs we take pride in our expanding concrete pavement, heedless of the fact that we are murdering our soil, and only recently have we realized why our cities have become more vulnerable to inundation - the soil can no longer absorb the water.
Know our limit
The Chinese sage Chuangtze, while elaborating on "The Secret of Caring for Life," said that "Your life has a limit but knowledge has none. If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger."
Modern changes have created an overweening pride in the capacity to tinker with nature.
When scientists are preoccupied with "how," they are usually distracted from the more important issue of "why."
Human existence has been turned into an action-packed drama, full of strife, tension, and "achievements."
In Chinese tradition, a person with a limited outlook is usually referred to as "a frog in a well."
Chuangtze once said, "You cannot speak of the ocean to a well-frog, which is limited by his abode. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect, which is limited by its short life."
Similarly, "What man knows is not to be compared with what he does not know. The span of his existence is not to be compared with the span of his nonexistence. To strive to exhaust the infinite by means of the infinitesimal necessarily lands him in confusion and unhappiness."
Asked how he liked his classroom, he said he was glad there are no beds - he's a hypnophobe - but sad he didn't see any toys.
The 7-year-old boy was obviously unprepared for the next decade and beyond when indoctrination in formal knowledge will be a very high priority, so high that his entire worth will be measured by his success in mastering facts.
How efficient he is in assimilating knowledge will be a good predictor of his future productivity, or more accurately, his future earning power.
For that reason alone knowledge is cast in an aura of sanctity.
When Christian philosophers delved into the mysteries of the universe during the Renaissance, they have been motivated by the desire to prove God as the "first cause" or "prime mover," an inquiry which many people today would dismiss as superstitious.
We believe our faith in GDP, the market, and money is more rational.
Francis Bacon said, "A little learning is a dangerous thing," and there is ample evidence that our learning is more limited than we presume it to be.
Wang Min, vice-minister of the Ministry of Land and Resources, said on Sunday that the Three Gorges Dam area is currently facing a "grim situation" in trying to prevent and control potential danger.
Xinhua reported that since the water level of the Three Gorges Reservoir rose to 175 meters last September, 97 sections of bank have collapsed and 2,000 people have been forced to relocate.
This is sending a cautionary message to other attempts to dam rivers and lakes.
For instance, public uproar has, miraculously, forced local officials to reconsider the proposal to dam the 3,500-square-kilometer Poyang Lake in Jiangxi Province.
Xinhua reported that China's largest freshwater lake has been threatened by "receding water levels since 2003 due to climate change, human activities, decreased flows from upstream rivers, and the start of water storage at the Three Gorges Dam."
We have learned the simple art of damming, digging, drilling and paving over, without acquiring the more complex arts of mitigating the destructive potential of our handiwork.
More than a month after the oil rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, the ruptured well is still gushing oil, with the massive slick already reaching the American shoreline and wetlands.
And there seems to be precious little that can be done to contain the spill.
BP knows how to drill a hole in the earth's crust, but not how to stanch the wound.
Drastic measures are being used in the cleanup, such as burning off oil and using chemical dispersants, but it is warned that the cleanup itself could do more harm than good.
More sensible is the understanding that the only viable option is to take advantage of nature's healing power, and wait for weather and natural microbes to break down the oil.
Out of sight
Such thoughtlessness and blindness seem to characterize all human endeavors, particularly when there is huge energy to be tapped.
Thanks to nuclear scientists, we are now living with arsenals of nukes capable of blowing up the earth many times over, and feel very arrogant about our power.
As depletion of fossil fuels is inevitable, many have been flirting with the idea of nuclear energy, holding it up as clean, safe, and sustainable.
According to Deb Katz, executive director of the Citizens Awareness Network, alongside America's rivers and lakes, on ocean shores and tidal bays, "nearly 63,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste - which remains dangerous for longer than recorded history - sits in 'temporary' storage."
Some of the waste has been there for decades, and will remain for decades longer.
Like so many of society's waste problems, out-of-sight, out-of-mind has become a de facto "solution."
Since the economic crisis, many local governments in China have been providing incentives for private car buyers.
The policy gives local GDP a strong boost, ranking China's as No. 1 in car consumption worldwide.
You can derive whatever amount of satisfaction from that glowing figure, if you can get away from the perpetual noise, horn-blaring, exhaust fumes, traffic snarls, and steady erosion of neighborhood, nature and public space.
In our eagerness to urbanize our environs we take pride in our expanding concrete pavement, heedless of the fact that we are murdering our soil, and only recently have we realized why our cities have become more vulnerable to inundation - the soil can no longer absorb the water.
Know our limit
The Chinese sage Chuangtze, while elaborating on "The Secret of Caring for Life," said that "Your life has a limit but knowledge has none. If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger."
Modern changes have created an overweening pride in the capacity to tinker with nature.
When scientists are preoccupied with "how," they are usually distracted from the more important issue of "why."
Human existence has been turned into an action-packed drama, full of strife, tension, and "achievements."
In Chinese tradition, a person with a limited outlook is usually referred to as "a frog in a well."
Chuangtze once said, "You cannot speak of the ocean to a well-frog, which is limited by his abode. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect, which is limited by its short life."
Similarly, "What man knows is not to be compared with what he does not know. The span of his existence is not to be compared with the span of his nonexistence. To strive to exhaust the infinite by means of the infinitesimal necessarily lands him in confusion and unhappiness."
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