knowledge leads one to realize what one did not know, before. there are things which one can only see when one can see what one cannot or could not see! it is both, a sword and a powerful light. the duality of what knowldge can do, once it is apparent, does call for that rallying of universal spirits of colliding and balancing powers, which would strike a chord between benefits of knowing and disadvan tages of not knowing. it is that depth that is noted, when it surfaces.
these kind of reversals make us see the value of true nature of knowledge as it presents itself to a thinking and reasoning mind and when that happens, an agent such as a human being, and enables one to decipher what one could not logically grasp, before.
the use of knowledge can set the tone, for what its true value or worth is, as a damaging factror or as a real ancillary.
hope this is a good start of a spurred discussion on your query, intelliphant.
Indeed Dushwari, it is a good start, to make it interesting and to get “the best” out of you, I will contest every statement that you will make, let’s see how shallow I will appear in my rationale when speaking against the necessity of knowledge. However let’s keep the main perspective as “knowledge being a tool for a better life”;
Knowing what we know in comparison to what we didn’t know before, doesn’t, guarantee that what we know is what we should know to improve our lives or life around us generally. On the other hand knowing what we should know to improve life is a call to decision and timing of the decision rather than knowledge.
The process of decision making has more to do with the bias or inclination that we genetically carry with us than the nurture that puts us, normally, on a wrong train, destination of which is dictated by our society, our education system and mentors of all kind whose intellectual insight is marred by their own limited interest that they can afford to put in us to eke out best in us. The dilemma of modestly educated person is that his education drags him/her in one direction and his aptitude pulls in other leaving the subject more confused than an ill informed who does not have luxury of options.
Those who stand at a higher level in knowledge tend to use their information as a sword mostly to chop any and every opportunity for those who don’t enjoy the information, thus making not only their own lives least gratified but miserable for others, and to a surprise all those who were once incapacitated and maimed by the vice of being ignoramus, join the same club if reach at certain level of knowledge. So in essence knowledge is a sword always naked for the ignorant rather than for the ignorance