Knowledge that binds
Reflections on a timely aphorism
I have set around me [divine and natural] powers …
Against all knowledge that binds the soul of man.
~ Saint Patrick's Breastplate (circa 8th century), translated by J. H. Todd (1986)
The Columbian philosopher Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913 – 1994) belongs to that most unfortunate yet exclusive club of profound thinkers whom time has rendered practically irrelevant. Not that he ever was a significant figure in his lifetime; he had valuable things to say but a small audience for them. Besides, he never authored a systematic philosophical doctrine; only, in his words, a “reactionary patchwork”. You could—a bit harshly—describe his thought as more analogous to an appetiser or dessert than to the main course.
Still, to judge from the writings he left behind, the man made his mark, however so faint and small. At least he escaped the fate to which most humans are, and have been, consigned. Forgotten he is, though he was great; most people aren’t great and will be forgotten.
Dávila’s best-known and probably most important work is a five-volume collection of aphorisms or scholia1. So far as I’m aware, only selections have been translated into English (by Michael Gilleland and others). But these samples are enough to convey the flavour of the whole.
Here’s one of my favourites. “Confused ideas and muddy ponds appear deep” (I, 40). It would be difficult to write a more lapidary sentence. No one who has had to slog through academic articles, especially those in the so-called social sciences and the humanities, can fail to grasp its meaning. Nor can anyone who has encountered the rubbish peddled by postmodern critical theorists. Moreover, the aphorism sounds a helpful warning about our (well-meaning people’s) thoughts and utterances. Confusion stalks our most cherished verbalisms.
Another memorable, albeit longer, one of the scholia reads:
“In an age in which the media broadcast countless pieces of foolishness, the educated man is defined not by what he knows, but by what he doesn’t know” (I, 268).
(I suggest mentally substituting “wise” for “educated” in that sentence, as we all know how meaningless the latter word has become.)
I first read that aphorism about three years ago, and it has stuck with me ever since. Scarcely have three days passed this year without my thinking of it, relevant as it is in this “social media” age, and perhaps even more so than in the comparatively sane times in which its author lived. Indeed, it encapsulates nuggets of old wisdom that we moderns seem to have abandoned or lost.
These truths are at least twofold. The first is that knowledge isn’t an absolute good, or, to put it positively, that some forms of ignorance are ideal. That is to say, in certain conditions, for the good of one’s soul, there are things one would be better off knowing very little about. Contrary to Lord Bacon’s dictum—or at any rate to its widely presumed import—not all knowledge is power2. Some kinds of knowledge, in fact, weaken us, clutter our minds, tarnish our purest intentions, and divert us from our noblest aims.
It’s worth asking, for example, how much of the information we take in daily, through social media or otherwise, empowers us—that is, offers us a profitable exchange of value for time. Not much, I’d bet. A large part of it serves merely to “pass the time”—which doesn't seem very wise, given the three score years and ten that the most fortunate of us are allotted on earth. Yet no less considerable is the amount that actively harms us, whether by distracting us from worthwhile tasks that demand sustained attention or by releasing morally poisonous fumes into our mental atmosphere.
Some people practise material minimalism, discarding (what they consider) unnecessary possessions to simplify life and attain peace. But Davila’s “educated man” adapts this method to his intellectual needs. He trains himself to become an avid informational minimalist and, by so doing, creates the conditions for forming a clear, balanced mind.
“Contrary to Lord Bacon’s dictum—or at any rate to its widely presumed import—not all knowledge is power. Some kinds of knowledge, in fact, weaken us, clutter our minds, tarnish our purest intentions, and divert us from our noblest aims.”
Now such minimalism would hardly be possible without a complementary discipline. And this is the second truth Dávila teaches—namely, that the intellectual appetite for knowledge (i.e. curiosity) is like any physical appetite in that it needs to be regulated to function optimally.
Physical appetites, such as those for food and sex, are governed by physiological systems that interact somehow with mental workings. The regulation of feeding, in particular, clearly has a bodily aspect: your gut tells your brain when you’ve ingested sufficient food and, feeling full, you stop eating.
Yet mental operations also respond to and modify the bodily ones. This configuration explains, among other things, how it’s possible to voluntarily overeat. Overeating occurs when, for whatever reason, you ignore your body’s signs of satiation, and if you do this regularly, it throws the signalling system “out of whack”. And not only the quantity of food but also its quality disrupts the system. Indeed, both factors interact. For as virtually everyone has discovered, you are more likely to overeat when feeding on junk.
Dysregulated eating thus leads to obesity, with its attendant ills. Similarly, intellectual obesity is born of unchecked curiosity and exerts disastrous effects. Like the physical kind, it breeds laziness and passivity. The mind, so accustomed to idle consumption, produces little that’s valuable. Recreation turns into “downtime”, becomes ever more mindless, more escapist in the worst sense. Rather than a furnisher of seeds for spiritual cultivation, reality seems a canister of deadly spores—something to shield oneself from. And although some truth may reside in both views of life, the latter is also apt to damage one’s mental health.
Hardly surprising, then, that you find an epidemic of psychological distress these days in which, not coincidentally, people are floundering in mass media. Overconsumption of mental junk has led to intellectual-cum-spiritual obesity, a condition almost everyone now suffers from.
The situation isn’t totally hopeless, though. For we can do something today that might help resolve our predicament. We may harken to Dávila’s wise words—warning and prescribing—and thus grow wiser ourselves.
Doubtless these reflections are inchoate, but they’d be more so if they failed to touch an objection that may have arisen in the reader’s mind. I can imagine the reader wondering: In your insistence on the merits of selective ignorance and on the regulation of curiosity, isn’t there a danger of legitimising or even endorsing a kind of obtuseness—a self-barricade from multiple paths to beneficial knowledge? Haven’t we more to fear from insularity and close-mindedness than from curiosity run amok?
My answers to both questions are “yes, there is” and “yes, we have”. But it’s always possible, and perhaps likely, that a certain type of person will interpret a call for moderation in a given matter as a gentle slope inclining to one extreme or another. Nothing I’ve said in the preceding paragraphs is opposed to the search for knowledge per se. I’ve merely pointed out, with Dávila’s help, the need to exercise more discernment about the information we regularly take in. Such discrimination, necessary even in times past, is doubly so now that the ubiquity of social media has somehow—you’d have thought it impossible— vastly multiplied the “countless pieces of foolishness” that people can access.
So the point bears restating: Mistaken is the widespread modern conception that curiosity is a virtue and that all undertakings in the name of knowledge or “experience” are ipso facto justified. What’s virtuous isn’t curiosity but healthy curiosity: not merely knowledge but wisdom empowers.
And as omniscience belongs to God alone, acquiring wisdom involves the difficult, inexhaustible task of carefully curating the domains of your ignorance. In short, “do not be ashamed”, exhorted A. G. Sertillanges, “not to know what you could only know at the cost of scattering your attention.”
Then again, someone may wonder whether I really mean to suggest that most people’s ravenous consumption of social media is driven to some degree by unregulated curiosity. Why, yes, I do. It may not be the sole driver, but I think it’s a crucial one.
As to the hows of checking curiosity and adopting prudent ignorance, they will have to await treatment in a separate and probably much later post. Meanwhile, it may be helpful to consult advice books that deal with the theme, most notably—on the social media aspect—Digital Minimalism (2019) by the admirable Cal Newport.
Scholia (the plural of scholion) refers to scholarly marginalia inserted in the manuscripts of ancient authors. Dávila called his aphorisms “scholia on an implicit text” or Escolios a Un Texto Implicito (1977; 1986; 1992).
The expression “ipsa scientia potestas est” [knowledge itself is power] is found in Francis Bacon’s Meditationes Sacrae (1597).