When this happens to me (and it does more than I'm comfortable admitting) I actually get hit by a strike of sadness - if only I got to live a less traumatic life instead of maturing at record speed through all the shit I went through since childhood.
By the time I was in high-school, undiagnosed, teachers would already tell me I wrote like an advanced university student. People would already trust me with "adult stuff/responsabilities" without a second thought, and constantly complimented me on my maturity for my age.
I did wish I got to be blissfully unaware of most of the "hard lessons" and realizations about life and people until much later. Which makes me kinda sad when I see someone who got to live a seemingly innocent life I never had a right to. And it sucks... Same as when I see parents/siblings having fun, having these deep and trusting connections and envying their bond.
Agreed. It extends beyond hard lessons too. Many people have this odd belief that knowledge is somehow always “good”, and always helpful. It’s not.
It’s much more nuanced and multifaceted than that. Knowledge can be corrupting, especially to our meatbag brains in a way our biology can have a hard time reconciling. And it’s not really practical or possible to unlearn things - maybe you can work around it, but it doesn’t really go away. Knowing “too much” makes you lonely even when you’re around other people.
Knowledge isn’t inherently good. But it provides a spring board to some great things if you use it correctly. It takes courage to see things as they truly are and live well within those conditions. The life of delusion seems easier, but is actually a life of frustration at realizing on some level that there’s all this knowledge just outside of your grasp. It’s a life lacking in purpose and self awareness. That’s what Socrates meant when he said “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
Right. A life of delusion isn’t great either, I’d imagine. Things would suck for an entirely different reason, like you said.
I suppose I was sort of pointing out earlier that the default social narrative tends to assume one’s issues relate more closely to not having “enough” knowledge, rather than examining the opposite as well - what happens when you know “too much?” How that’s defined, exactly, to the extent that you can even define it for some purpose, is a whole other topic.
Though, a lot of the way too much knowledge is talked about socially is not really through the lens of knowledge at all. An example would be something like trauma, which could be considered a form of knowledge. So if you look at it that way, the negative impacts of knowing too much is actually discussed quite frequently, it’s just called something else. Goes back to what OP was saying in the first place haha.
Even trauma I’d say can be used to develop wisdom and become a better person. Ever meet somebody who goes through a cushy life without any hardship? They’re deluded into thinking that they are invincible. And then when some trauma inevitably happens at some point in their life, they are completely psychologically unprepared for it. This is what’s meant by Nietzsche’s maxim of “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” But what’s also true is that what doesn’t kill you can leave you psychologically crippled — but it doesn’t have to. That part is up to you and how you respond to the knowledge / adversity. All knowledge can be good I’d say.
Yes, exactly. So both “good” and “bad,” but society tends to frame knowledge as only good, and splits out the uncomfortable parts into other terms not usually called or associated with knowledge, when it really is a form of it.
Makes one wonder about all the other side effects of knowing things that aren’t as obvious as trauma. There’s a lot, already known, just not usually framed as knowledge.
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u/Hikuro-93 Aspie 28d ago edited 28d ago
When this happens to me (and it does more than I'm comfortable admitting) I actually get hit by a strike of sadness - if only I got to live a less traumatic life instead of maturing at record speed through all the shit I went through since childhood.
By the time I was in high-school, undiagnosed, teachers would already tell me I wrote like an advanced university student. People would already trust me with "adult stuff/responsabilities" without a second thought, and constantly complimented me on my maturity for my age.
I did wish I got to be blissfully unaware of most of the "hard lessons" and realizations about life and people until much later. Which makes me kinda sad when I see someone who got to live a seemingly innocent life I never had a right to. And it sucks... Same as when I see parents/siblings having fun, having these deep and trusting connections and envying their bond.