Is Knowledge Power?
What is knowledge and how does knowledge help people achieve goals?
Knowledge is the familiarity or the awareness that is gained about something and having an understanding of a particular thing or things, it is being quipped with the information or the facts about a particular thing, or a particular concept or concepts.
Knowledge can also be a skill that is acquired when someone observes, experiences or learns about a particular thing. Knowledge can either be a practical knowledge or a theoretical knowledge and it helps the acquirer to be able to take decisions, be innovative and also be able to solve problems when rightly informed.
Knowledge helps people to achieve their goals in so many ways:
Knowledge helps people to make informed decisions. informed decisions because it provides them the basis or foundation to choose through the knowledge they have gotten which serves as a foundation in that way they are able to reduce risk and uncertainties that could be associated with the decision making.
Knowledge makes for problem solving. Knowledge helps to equip us with the ability to understand and analyze problems and then proffer workable solutions and strategies.
Knowledge helps to increase the creative abilities in us. It helps us to be able to generate new ideas about products and services and hence brings about progress and achievement.
When someone is knowledgeable about a thing, it’s boosts the confidence level of that individual and also enhances the individuals credibility before others.
Knowledge improves our over all productivity and performance and leads us to create better objectives and achieve more goals.
Knowledge makes for efficient communication abilities, aids networking and collaboration wherever we find ourselves
What do you understand by the saying, "Ignorance is bliss". Can ignorance be powerful?
The saying that ignorance is bliss means that sometimes not having information or knowing about certain things can give some a sense of peace. Happiness and contentment. When you have knowledge about certain things, it can lead to you loosing your peace or being anxious or worried and sometimes even stress.
There are certain contexts in which ignorance can be powerful for example, ignorance can make for living a simple life which in turn reduces worries and concerns. When certain details are unknown to someone, the persons can be focus more on important aspects of their lives. Ingnorance shields our minds from overwhelming and distressing information and makes for mental well being.
For example, this morning before I began making this post, a friend of mine told me a disturbing story on our way out this morning. She said she saw a video yesterday of a man who was killed by road safety officers just because of five thousand naira. The wife of the man started shouting and raising alarm and people began to gather. She was explaining how that they just came into the country from The USA and they haven’t even gotten home and her husband has been killed. That story totally disoriented me. All throughout our journey, I was not myself. Just because of this singular knowledge. If I was ignorant of this story, I wouldn’t have had that emotional distress. Sometimes, ignorance can really be powerful but it all has to do with the context in question.
How does misinformation affect knowledge?
Misinformation can impact knowledge by:
Misinformation can lead to a distortion of understanding by making people to have assumptions that are not correct and also wrong understanding of facts.
Misinformation can spread very fast especially in this era of social media and once the wrong information is passed across, it will be difficult to correct.
Continuous misinformation can lead to lack of trust. No one would trust anyone who keeps feeding them with the wrong information.
Misinformation can lead people into making the wrong choices and hence produce adverse consequences.
Therefore it’s critical to always ensure we verify information from sources that are credible and also ensure that we only pass genuine and accurate information along to others.
Is knowledge really power?
Well, I don’t mean to slight cos we all know the power of knowledge. On growing up, we’ve all heard that knowledge is power but here I would be giving this a little twist, knowledge is only powerful when it is applied.
My mentor would say that knowledge is not power but applied knowledge is power. You can have all the knowledge in the world but it would only benefit you when you put it into application, so let’s lets say that applied knowledge is the real power.