Knowledge and Wisdom

"What is the capital of Surinam", said the clipped voice. Three fingers rammed into the makeshift switches serving as buzzers, as bulbs lit up in the panel in front of the quizmaster. The scorer - pretty Parvati Ramakrishnan from Standard IX - shouted "Green house". It meant I had been a bit slow. I knew this one. It was Paramaribo. I could only hope the jerks from green house would miss out and the question would revert. The bespectacled captain of green house team took a deep breath and said "Georgetown". I suppose only two people in the room knew he was wrong.

"(Cluck) Georgetown" said the quizmaster with a dramatic pause in a rather cheap imitation of the current quizzing pinup Siddharth Basu, and then said "is the wrong answer. Minus Five to green house and the question passes to...". "Red House" pipped up Parvati before slicing off the afore-mentioned five points from green house’s precarious scorelines.

My captain was ready to pass when I pressed the buzzer again, this time without company. Akash looked at me, aghast, sure I was going to say Elizabethtown or some other colonial name. "Paramaribo", I said crisp and confident. "Is the correct answer", followed-up the Basu-clone and segued into "and your bonus question is ’which swimmer from Surinam edged out fancied Matt Biondi...". This, I suppose a whole lot of people knew, but I did not wait for the question to end "Anthony Nesty", I said to general applause and loud cheering from the Red House corner.

And so it was in the late eighties, when general knowledge was a qualification and quizzing a contact sport. I grew up knowing the difference between sclerenchyma and collenchyma long after it could get me a high school qualification. I knew the sage who grew out of the ejaculate of a rishi stored in a pot, to the general distaste of even my usually appreciative parents.

Knowledge was supreme. Knowledge was art. Wisdom became craft, vocation, something I was never good at. Wisdom was applied, Knowledge was pure. Wisdom was realism, knowledge abstract. Wisdom affected your behaviour, Knowledge only your perspective. Wisdom gave a moral certainity that is at the root of all evil.

Bush, Hitler and all others have acted only out of this moral certainity, the lack of doubt that Knowledge can give. The path of hell is paved, not with noble intentions, but with moral absolutism, that wreaks havoc on the world.

Just take the third commandment (while at it, reflect a moment on the word commandment), "You shall not make for yourself an image". Why not? What makes you so certain? If you are a God, then why are jealous (see the next commandment). This is precisely what comes out of wisdom.

The second poison of wisdom is that it becomes ingrained. A "flight or fight" choice taken in high school becomes ordained behaviour thirty years later in a boardroom. We have all seen the abrasive, combative corporate bully and the stealthy back-door slime. All ’wise’ choices that spread through our system, and make us automatons that act out of choice, chosing one alternative out of one.

And finally, the biggest difference between knowledge and wisdom is this - knowledge is reversible, it can be forgotten, this is its greatest gift. "Did Carl Lewis win four long jump Olympic golds or three? Hmmm...three I think."

There is an old Tamil song which goes "Mind - you who can remember, can you not learn to forget". This is the golden truth - can you ever forget a wisdom the way you can forget your knowledge. Or are we forever doomed to be dictated by our enlightenments?