This is a beautiful essay on an old phrase “A Little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. In this era of expert knowledge, a little knowledge of the world stands nowhere. One has to keep oneself updated in order to be somewhere in this world.
Be it any stream of knowledge, any part of wisdom, in depth knowledge of it is necessary in order to be able to formulate an opinion or develop a line of thought. Whether it is art, science, literature, politics, technology, communication, astronomy, computers, economics, administration, law etc or whether it is simply about life in general, one has to have great, deep and wide knowledge about it in order to be able to speak about it— for, or against. This is necessary, needed and demanded especially in today’s world where opinions are challenged and words have to pay a price.
In this era of expert knowledge, a little knowledge of the world stands nowhere. One has to keep oneself updated in order to be somewhere in this world. Moreover, where every word spoken is accountable and is scrutinized closely one cannot get away with sweeping statements which in reality conceal shallow knowledge. It has been proved many times that words spoken without any real knowledge and statements given without true understanding have often created trouble and controversy. Words thus uttered thoughtlessly have created mess which is cleared often by apologies. Thus, if one wants to stay away from troubles one has to learn to be aware of one’s own world around and continuously gather knowledge as readily as children enjoy gathering flowers in a garden during spring time.
An ill-informed soldier will get himself foolishly killed if he has no knowledge of war strategies or else will even more foolishly kill his own comrades. A teacher will instill absurd knowledge and inverted concepts if he has no real learning himself. An industrialist will ruin his fortune as well as of the others if he has no true knowledge about his own business. A lawyer will ruin his clients’ fate without thorough knowledge of law and legality. A dumb engineer’s bridge is sure to collapse and God save a patient from a dumber doctor!
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Therefore, it is always very dangerous to rely on such a half-knowledge. It is rather better to have no knowledge and learning than to prove to be a fool with an incomplete one. It is usually seen that people with half-knowledge and little or meager learning show and pretend to have a lot of it than those people who have true taste of what knowledge is. Wise people are usually quiet when fools talk. And it is this blindness of fools to their own lack of knowledge which lets them remain in their benighted condition for the rest of their lives. They are blind to their follies and rather cover them up with their superficial learning and hence close all doors for further learning and advancement. A wise person is also fully informed about his own ignorance so that he can shovel away the cobwebs of his ignorance and enlighten himself with the weapon of knowledge. People with real wisdom are like those trees over-laden with fruit bending low so that everyone can enjoy their blessed fruits. It is the man of little learning who is haughty and self-conceited-standing erect likes a dry and rotten tree which breaks but does not bend. Hence, in turn, loses its own very existence.