The Riddle Of Knowledge

I am something, I have keys but no locks. I have space but no room. You can enter, but you can’t go inside. What am I?

While you are trying to figure out what the answer to that riddle is, you’ll notice how your mind is twirling in different directions with a mix of excitement, the idea of knowing, and the defeat of ignorance all at the same time.

The more you read the riddle (if you didn’t know the answer before now), the more the supposed simplicity of its answer hints you as though you know it, and the more you realize how you do not know it even though reading it at first, you had the excitement to journey in curiosity to simply know the answer.

Four things are going on in your mind as you try to unpack the riddle; the excitement to know more, the curiosity to pursue, the defeat of ignorance, and, the pride of knowledge.

It’s similar to how we engage knowledge and how knowledge poses a paradoxical obstacle or pathway to how we choose to live, engage & embody our genius.

Hold the thought of the riddle in your mind as we delve into this essay to understand the riddle of knowledge and how to always get the answer whenever you need to.

I’ll give you the answer to the riddle at the end of this essay but for now, let’s get right into the idea I seek to establish with this —the riddle of knowledge.

Do you recall the feeling of excitement you get when you interact with new knowledge? Or the gush of childlike joy that comes from a new idea, discovery, or knowledge? This excitement can produce two things; confirmation bias or intellectual curiosity.

Confirmation bias simply refers to the tendency to interpret ideas and knowledge with pre-existing opinions, beliefs, and familiar insight. That is, as you get excited with knowledge that resonates, what excites you is the confirmation and validation it gives to your existing knowledge.

You may consider yourself a knowledge seeker but simply be an item of correctness. Where the focus of your knowledge acquisition or acceptance is hinged on the correctness of what you have known. Thus, when knowledge excites you, you find similarities and nuances that underpin what you’ve always known and what you are just knowing.

You see, when knowledge excites you - it is a great thing. However, it’s critical to uncover what such excitement births. This helps you wield control of your transformation such that your mind isn’t given to ideas serenaded as beliefs with no substance to hold itself together in the face of opposing ideas.

When what is formed out of that excitement is a confirmation bias, you move in circles; oblivious to you because of your rebellion to recognize the reality of changing ideas. Now, the desire to be “correct” and to affirm that you know because of the validation the communication of seemingly new yet familiar knowledge offers is borne out of the fear of not being wrong.

Have you ever wondered why it is often said to not pursue knowledge deeply to avoid loss or changing your belief? I think this is mostly popular amongst people of Faith who fear questioning or the emergence of new knowledge as it is seen as the doom of a people. The reality I have been faced with is that this isn’t necessarily true. It is simply an attempt to protect what has been known for fear that it can change and it could mean hypocrisy.

We do not question not because we know enough but because we fear that what we know may change and we could become the object of what we’ve once criticized.

When seeking knowledge, we don’t often seek to understand, rather, we seek to find what is familiar, to justify our preconceived notions, to confirm existing paradigms, and to validate un-investigated ideas.

Excitement is dicey; its fruit is confirmation bias & intellectual curiosity. However, due to the slavery of the human mind, it is quite rare to find those whose excitement births curiosity. That is, the ability to engage knowledge no matter how exciting not with confirmation but with curiosity. The curiosity to understand, to dig deeper, and to journey into uncharted territories to find depth.

You see, it’s a riddle. With the excitement that comes with knowledge, it’s easy to maintain the posture of genius because you believe yourself to be a seeker and one who is committed to development. This isn’t wrong. Although, it begs the question - to what end is such excitement? For agreement or curiosity?

This brings me to the next fruit of excitement; Intellectual curiosity.

Have you ever seen a kid excited about a new toy? Note that they never simply accept that it’s a new toy. They are extremely curious to know how it works, what makes it move, and the technology that beautifies it. It’s why you see them destroy their toy cars and things like that. Now, the idea for them isn’t to destroy, it is what we as adults interpret it to be. Rather, it is to dig deep, to find out, to understand the nuances, and to develop strong opinions around the reality of such a toy.

That’s curiosity.

Excitement leads you to dig deep. Not to accept but to discover. To make sense not from existing opinions but through critical thinking. That’s what intelligence looks like.

Vusi Thembekwayo’s definition of intelligence is quite the icing on the cake to reiterate this idea —
“Intelligence is how elastic your mind is; it is the ability to interrogate new data using new frameworks and to arrive at new outcomes without getting stuck in the past.”

It’s easier to criticize what is being said mainstream than it is to criticize your conclusions as you engage new knowledge, especially from the lips of those you admire who uphold a level of credibility and authority around their work.

Excitement should lead you towards curiosity so you can form your own opinions. So, even when you listen to what sounds familiar and exciting on that basis, pen down questions to deepen your understanding of that idea. That’s the harder part of the excitement path. It’s easier to engage confirmation bias than it is to engage curiosity. Hence, it’s wiser to say “rhema!” when you hear something that excites you but you never question it.

Now, while excitement does birth curiosity on some level, curiosity is an adventure that is birthed with new knowledge though becomes acceptance or rejection based on mental disposition.

If the disdain you have towards any idea wasn’t carved out of curiosity but outright rejection, you would eventually become an object of that disdain. We often think that once we close ourselves off seemingly false ideas then we are “safeguarding” ourselves. No, you’re not. This is how what we call “peer pressure” happens; when people change their skins. It is based on disdain towards an un-investigated idea.

When you do not “do” out of fear of pollution, you make yourself subject to being polluted in due time because the foundation for your disdain is baseless. Hence, a superior argument would weigh you out of that balance and give you a different reality. This is what makes people change.

This is why it’s inherently wrong to approach any idea with disdain or rejection. Approach first with curiosity. Seek to understand and on that basis, form your opinions - now informed. Don’t live powerlessly. That’s the riddle.

These are the words of Sir Francis Bacon; “A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth a man’s mind to religion”.

When people change, it’s not because they encountered new knowledge, it’s because of foolishness and the weakness of their mind to seek depth revealing their inability to think. New knowledge changes you based on the foundation of your old knowledge. The reality is different. It’s not same.

While we’ve addressed excitement to know more and curiosity to pursue, we are now faced with “The defeat of ignorance”

Oh..a sinking sand.
You see, the more you know the more you realize there is so much to know. It’s defeating to think of. Truly.

The idea that the more you know, the more aware you are of how much more you do not know as well as how much more you are not even aware of that which you do not know. How poetic!

Reality is - we often overestimate how much we know and underestimate how much we do not know neglecting the fact that there is that which you are not even aware you do not know.

The realization of your inability as a human to know all that there is especially when it is necessary can be the speck in your own eyes.

Imagine being such an emblem of brilliance yet scrabbling with your words when asked a question in a way that you are unable to make sense of in the moment? It’s defeating. The obvious report card of foolishness and the easiest evaluation of your knowledge acquisition.

However, the criticality of this insight is to accept that you can not know all that there is but seek to know as much as humanly possible along your field of genius.

Have you figured out the riddle I gave earlier? Imagine you were asked that in front of a crowd and think of how simple it seemed yet how ignorant you were of it’s answer. The defeat? That’s the riddle..

Knowledge is a humbling quest. The more you know, the more there is to know. Each layer reveals another layer of insight critical for your advancement. Hence, the idea of knowledge isn’t for arrival, it is for exploration - to follow the currents of the wind and to realize that the more you grasp, the more you realize the vastness of the unknown.

Ignorance reveals to us the construct of our humanity; it’s imperfections and the ideology around our meaning as “HOMO SAPIENS”, Human “BEINGS”. That the very fabric of our being is the reality of progression and unknown terrains. It is our cue to realize this riddle and engage it as sovereign.

The next idea in this procession is the exact opposite of the defeat of ignorance; it is —The Pride Of Knowledge.

Knowledge shouldn’t puff up ordinarily as it is often propagated. Knowledge puffs up when you seek to know not to understand. When you pursue the desire to be seen as knowledgeable rather than the curiosity to deepen an idea. It is the curiosity to deepen an idea that makes you knowledgeable not the acquisition of knowledge for arrogant positioning. What that does is help you shout about how much you know yet reveal how much you don’t to those who do.

You see, the acquisition of knowledge can become the limiter for understanding. Where the archive of information you’ve grappled with becomes the defense against new knowledge forgetting that what you know is never infinite.

There are three fruits the pride of knowledge produces; Confirmation without execution, Confirmation without meaning & Rejection without meaning.

Confirmation without execution;
This is when you engage knowledge as all-knowing. You are quick to confirm and accredit the correctness of an idea but immune to the application of such idea. You know all the right things and stand tall as a know-it-all but fail excellently in the school of application.

Have you met people who know everything that they do nothing and know everything about why they do nothing? That’s a fruit of the pride of knowledge - confirmation without execution. Where you know so much that your arrogance has clouded you from moving in the direction of that which you know. Possibly because you do know the nuances involved in whatever path you take but it’s all philosophical not pragmatic.

Confirmation without meaning:
This can be referred to as “knowledge illusion” where you have an illusion of knowledge that directs your engagement with it. You believe so much that you know whereas you do not and engage from a point of false certainty and understanding of a subject.

That is, you navigate new knowledge by confirming to inflate your sense of awareness whereas you do not grasp the underlying meaning or depth around such idea. This happens quite often in this internet area where an individual can feign understanding from engaging micro video clips that have been grossly simplified and lack the weight, depth, and true meaning of the idea it is to communicate.

You see, that excitement some individuals may have to teach what was read or heard somewhere or like we see in recent times, build a personal brand around ideas that haven’t been deepened is confirmation without meaning.

There is depth of knowledge and there is pride of knowledge. Depth is given by curiosity and a desire to understand whereas pride is formed by illusion and a desire to be seen as knowledgeable.

Now, the ideas I have penned here don’t suggest that if you fall into any category you are doomed. It simply underpins the inability to truly be genius.

Rejection without meaning:
I guess this is a given - piggybacking off the last point; where you reject based on an illusion but without a robust knowledge base. You engage knowledge based on what you’ve heard and reject new knowledge from the standpoint of that illusion.

When you confidently reject knowledge without question, it’s the pride formed from an illusion of truth and the bed of un-investigated ideas.

Have you seen people defend an idea they have never questioned like they know exactly what they are talking about? They come off as extremely confident resembling one who is truly grounded yet when engaged, the fluffiness of their understanding is revealed.

That’s the riddle.

Knowledge is like a riddle and the journey to unravel it is the very fabric of understanding. To seek the answer is to miss the answer. To find the answer is to engage the riddle.

How do you play your riddles?

The answer to the riddle in the first paragraph was Keyboard.

Did you get it?

Yes? Read this again and use the answer you got to internalize the essay.

No? Read this with the answer you now know to see the thread that was woven to find gold.

In a world where you can be anything, be Genius.

- Faith Aziegbemi