I wanted to know – now i don’t

"Today, we live in a world which is immersed in an ocean of digital signals, to the extent of being deluged, formed up by raw data being converted to info in fractions of seconds"

‘If you think you know it all, you are not listening’ says Marsha Johnson Evans, a retired Rear Admiral from US Navy. Obviously, who else can glorify listening, other than someone from the armed forces, where ‘listening’ is an everyday chore. It goes without saying that conversion rate of ‘listening into knowledge’ also differs organization to organization, role to role and person to person. Why so? We need to understand that spectrum of ignorance ranges from being oblivious to being arrogant. Why to refer listening as a pre-requisite for attaining knowledge? What makes it unique from reading and observing? Has it not got something to do with the ease of drawing our attention as compared to other forms of focused assimilations. Based on this rationale, it is being employed in generic terms here. All societal and organizational behaviors and reactions to listening to surroundings for knowledge stem from the personal quests to seek the same. All the more reason for our everyday dilemma ‘Now I know – now I don’t’.

Today, we live in a world which is immersed in an ocean of digital signals, to the extent of being deluged, formed up by raw data being converted to info in fractions of seconds. Thereon, its conversion to knowledge may be sooner or later, but for sure. The binary numbers at the backend are rendering humans as mere numbers, to corporates and consortiums, the world over. Despite the fact that human brain has been bestowed upon immense processing speeds, yet it tends to get distracted by the unabated data onslaught. That much on it, as enough has been already said in my previous article here titled “The Age of Algorithm”. This info overload makes us know so much, makes us forget even more.

What we know, we know from past predominantly and present, dominantly. The future only contributes to our repository, as hopes and fears. Plans, projections and forecasts per se. History helps us roam the past and info-tech is helping us to assess present in real time and we peep into the future too, again iterating on the basis of historical data. History, therefore is overarching. It, overtime, accords clarity, clarity leads to future through present. Every passing unit of time is creating history for us, be it days, weeks, months or years, so on and so forth. This soft face of history is superimposed by its brutality too. Brutal in a way that it lays the facts straight (hold horses of counter argument, till the last), it makes us glare in the mirror which exposes not our highs only, but also our falls to abysmal lows. History denudes all and sundry, across the board. It deals with societies and individuals’ comfort zones, reservations and insecurities, as blindly, as law is supposed to take its course (are there any tongues in cheeks on use of “supposed”). The school of thought which has been a proponent of its end, finds itself in a limbo to render history irrelevant now.

Processing of historic past and present leads to formation of perceptions, which can be intrinsic or extrinsic, collective or individualistic. Perceptions, whatever they may be, they subtly or vociferously contribute to our system of morals and beliefs too. Humans understand phenomenon like identity, liberties, politics and nationalism on the basis of their perceptions. As for that matter, consider identity as an example, the basis of which are laid on the incoherence of an individual’s inside; inner self and outside; the surrounding society. Most individuals think that their true authentic identity hidden in themselves is at odds with what is perceived by the society. This perception of their own accords a sense of dignity to them and the means to prove to the world, who they actually are. Therefore, perceptions are viewpoints from where we view ourselves, others and surroundings. Same holds true for our view of history, information at present and its clutter and thus knowledge of issues, global, local or personal. Prioritizing issues on basis of perceptions is also related to agenda, which can again range from global to personal. Agendas change too, for someone working for climate change, its importance can get relegated when in hospital due to some medical condition, it is obvious that one’s own health shall take top priority, at least for the time being.

Information, history and perceptions as ingredients, global or local debates on issues seem to be a curry of celebration of human wisdom or lamentation of human miseries at times, a bland stalk at others. Ignorance of these, as pointed earlier, can be an outcome of myopic view of life or in arrogance stemming from know-all syndrome. Despite the fact that this myopic view has very strong social and economic undercurrents to it, but both the cases can be labelled as not listening to the history and/or flawed perceptions of it. Yet another reason can be the inability to decipher the fact from fiction or information out of noise; the curry burnout.

Therefore, the interplay of information, history and perceptions is very intricate. The custodian of history – the historian – has to realize that it is a sacred trust which he or she is carrying i.e. credible facts. Any intertwining of own perceptions can lead to severe distortion of history, which gets projected as noise in future. Knowledge is bound to be lost in “The Bermuda Triangle” of info overload, misreported history and flawed perceptions. A loss, owing to which, a listener might not only cover his ears but also shut his eyes, making a statement that ‘I wanted to know, but, now I don’t’.