Knowledge, Money and Power.

These three things are deeply interrelated like three strong, granite pillars holding a roof upright. It’s almost symbiotic.

Knowledge doesn’t weigh a thing at all, it’s intangible but then it’s stored in your brain in the form of memory. Understanding a field of interest like Physics, Chemistry, Biology, English Literature, History etc enables you to apply that abstract knowledge in our daily lives which in turn means you will not be able to apply for jobs that have a large salary. It’s another reason why a few of us spend ridiculous amounts of money to be inducted into tertiary education to acquire a piece of paper at the end of the course that tells the employer that we are best suited for the job etc. It’s funny how a piece of paper with ink represents those 3-4 years of late, sleepless nights and the general stress and hassle experienced. Hence when we acquire knowledge and extend it with new discoveries, inventions, new business ventures etc (which that was what knowledge was intended for in a crude, superficial sense), we are very likely to acquire large sums of money when selling the concept to a prospective individual or company which which want to make use of our new, novel idea to generate more profits for themselves in the future.

It is knowledge that can allow us to defeat any problem that we may encounter whether a person or thing, it gives us that flexibility, that ability to change and adapt (which is what the only constant is). Knowledge acts like a bridge between the past, present and the future; by analysing the past and the relics of that time, we sometimes come to realise that what we think we know as being recent like an idea/ invention was actually known thousands of years ago; the experience humbles us and makes us wonder how advanced we think we really are. I wonder if we are just repeating a cycle of time like that of the relic we studied before undergoing a decline/ catastrophe, restarting the chain of events and the discovery of the same relic to another group of people in the future who similarly thought they were advanced prior to making the discovery of the relic. By gaining more knowledge you can become more than the common crowd because the English language itself is arranged in a way so that people with very little knowledge of complicated vocabulary will not be able to understand books and information worthy to be learnt and instead tend towards more accessible Media like celebrity magazines, reality tv etc.

Look at what the convicted soldier Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden did. Just by imparting knowledge on a few truths and secrets that the US government didn’t want you to hear, you get the North American government overreacting to what they did because they simply told the TRUTH. Since when did telling the truth become a crime??? Knowledge is power. Without knowledge, you are not in a position of strength or power to make the best choices for yourself.

The strange thing about knowledge is that the more I learn and study, the more I begin to realise how very little I know and I am beset with ever increasing uncertainty. As what Socrates said thousands of years ago which was “I know nothing”, that saying still applies to today; look at the ideas and concepts of Physics up to the present moment and you begin to realise that all their theories in trying to find out what reality is made up of becomes increasingly strange. You come to a point in Quantum Mechanics where you have to accept the ideas as beliefs because it doesn’t make sense otherwise. Think about the nature of Time and what it really means to KNOW about it by typing on YouTube and you will find that we are worms on the 4th dimension. When you go beyond the 4th dimension, things get very strange indeed.

Money, that piece of paper which humans have ascribed emotional/ abstract value to it, that which we spend most of our lives acquiring very little of. Our possibilities of flourishing increase as we can make a significant amount of those pieces of paper helps us acquire even more knowledge in the form of books, artifacts, clandestine information (to be used for a market or against a company/ individual etc) and to trans-mutate money in a form so as to influence and buy someone’s favour. Buying someone’s loyalty by giving them money such as to charities, politicians etc puts you in a greater position of power (assuming they feel indebted to you because of your “kind” act). Think about the times corporations bribed politicians to look the other way and not interfere in the corporation’s business. That is true power.

As a good and wise friend told me, we are slaves to the money system. We spend our days accumulating the pieces of paper at work, we rent our bodies for it when we sit in front of a cashier, office desk etc as what Noam Chomsky states. As much as we desire to leave work sometimes and be free, we cannot because we need the cash to survive. So we are trapped in a way for the rest of our lives. As what Robert Kiyosaki states in his book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, when we receive or monthly/ weekly salary, the moment we get it, most of us succumb to the feeling of greed and that is when we spend most of it mindlessly on stuff we sometimes don’t need. Once our desires have been temporarily sated, we feel the fear of not having much money and losing our jobs so we go back to our jobs and repeat the cycle of greed and fear, greed and fear until there is very little time in us left and we die. This snare we find ourselves is called the “Rat Race” according to Kiyosaki, as like a rat who constantly runs on the wheel, always going, not stopping, always trapped in the same loop and pattern much like most of us. We sometimes kill for money as well. Funny how a piece of paper holds so much influence on us.

Power is an intangible thing that helps you to make someone do something for you without having to force them. Power is everywhere although it cannot be seen, only its effects can be experienced e.g. celebrities and singers hold a lot of power because just by doing what they do, they can attract thousands of followers which in turn means they acquire huge sums of money and fame. What they say or do deeply affects those followers. Celebrities are treated like gods. Celebrities acquire influence and power by creating compelling spectacles, by appealing to people’s needs. Power is all about appearances, this world is all about appearances. Power can be used to deceive people like the media and politicians who KNOW the truth but they deliberately ignore certain facts and give us information only they want us to know. This lack of choice and information makes us the manipulated/ controlled, doing/ reacting the way the way they want us to react and not necessarily in our best interest. We are puppets playing to the their tune, mindless pawns to be kept or discarded depending when it’s to their advantage. If we really knew going into Iraq and Afghanistan was all about stealing oil and Heroin poppies respectively, we wouldn’t be in that mess, would we? But then most of the media hides the amount of lies politicians conjure up so most of the public is suckered in to obeying everything they do like these dirty wars.

In summary, the more I know, the more money I can make. The more money I make, the more powerful and influential I become without having to appear to force someone to do something for me. Knowledge, Money and Power are like the Ouroboros, i.e. the cyclical dragon whose head appears to be biting its tail. It symbolises the end drawing near and a beginning occurring, when there is death there is also life in order for death to be meaningful and defined, the ying and yang, good and evil etc. They are one and the same yet different in aspect, where one is destroyed/ consumed, another appears.