Empowerment through Knowledge
If knowledge is power, then acquiring knowledge is power enhancing.
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Knowledge is power!
How often have you heard that? Many times, I'm sure. Is it true? And what does it mean?
According to the dictionary, knowledge is "the state of awareness, familiarity, or understanding gained through experience or study." It is also "the sum or range of what has been perceived, discovered, or learned." More specifically, it is "information about something."
Knowledge in this sense is information. In fact, 'information' is a synonym but is considered to be narrower in scope and is often said to imply a collection of facts and data.
I prefer to reserve 'information' for the idea expressed by an ordinary sentence. (I believe that so-called information that doesn't contribute to your needs or goals is noise, not information.) I would restrict the word 'data' to mean what is expressed through specific symbols like 'red' or '6 feet' or 'active.' These words can be parts of sentences, like 'The man is 6 feet tall' or 'The table is red' or 'The volcano is active.' In this sense data are like variables in a function. Then 'knowledge' is free to be used to refer to the efficient use of information. And 'wisdom' can mean the effective use of information.
Regardless of my preferences, though, we can still distinguish between knowledge about something, as the dictionary says, and knowledge of how to do something, which my dictionary doesn't mention. This is how I develop it in Simulations for Skills Training.
Take driving a car, for instance. There are plenty of books and magazines that talk about cars. You can read these materials and learn about driving a car without ever setting foot inside of one. That's the first kind of knowledge: as information.
But you can also get inside a car and actually drive it -- without ever reading a book about how to do it! It's dangerous, of course, and you can easily ruin a perfectly good tree in the process. But you can even learn something, despite the hazards. Indeed, you could eventually learn to drive. When that state finally arrives, you can be said to know how to drive.
So we really have two kinds of knowledge, even though my dictionary doesn't mention the second kind.
That means we really have two kinds of skills. The first kind is what let's you find out about things. You can be told how to use the library, for instance. Or this Website. I call these skills the perception skills, or the reading skills. They are investigative. They help you get information. They are information acquisition skills.
The second kind of knowledge, or skill, is what I call motor skills. They use information you get from the reading skills to do other things, like buy a car, or take a trip to the Bahamas, or get rich. You can see this difference in the tennis player's track and intercept functions.
What we ordinarily do is combine the two types of skills. Here's another example. Say you're stepping into your car. What actually happens? Well, for one thing, you have to see where to put your foot -- that's the information you need in order to avoid breaking your neck. So you check out the doorway and learn the car layout -- you do that more or less automatically, hardly even thinking about it. Then you use that information to guide your foot and step inside the car as you had planned.
Such activity goes on all the time, using your senses to get information and using your muscles to make your moves, then using your muscles to get more information. It's a complex interaction involving both kinds of skills. See my thesis notes for more details.
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Let's see what the Big Word Book has to say about 'power.'
The first thing is that power is the ability or capacity to perform or act effectively. Power is also the strength or force exerted or capable of being exerted. And it's the ability or official capacity, say of people in authority, to exercise control -- to have great influence or control over others.
Oddly enough, my dictionary doesn't mention the power you get from having a lot of money. But I guess that's part of the first statement, the one that says power is the capacity to perform or act effectively. That just means being able to go from state A to state B -- i.e., to solve problems. If you've got a stash of diamonds, or oil, or gold, or real estate, or whatever, I suppose you can get pretty much what you want when you want it. But then you'd probably also get things you don't want, like robbers and thieves.
The same thing would apply to strength -- except for the thieves. Putting ethics aside, if you're strong enough, if you have enough guns, for instance, or if you have an army that can knock off you're neighbors, I suppose you can do much as you please -- until you run into someone with a bigger, stronger army. Then it might be a fight to the death, and that could be the end of your power, not to mention the end of you.
In this respect, aren't money and guns just different ways of exercising power, of influencing people and getting things done, or generally getting what you want? In both cases, too, isn't some kind of knowledge required? Don't you have to know how to spend the money or use the guns? After all, you have to give orders or direct activities to get things done. If you leave all the action as well as the planning to others, what need do they have of you? None, I should think. They could manage nicely on their own.
Furthermore, couldn't knowledge be used independently of wealth or strength? If you have the know-how -- i.e., if you know how to get things done -- doesn't that count for something? Why should it involve money, or guns? In fact, those commodities might at times be counter-productive; instead of helping you, they could get in the way. Mind you, though, I don't advocate poverty!
I'm not saying you shouldn't have either wealth or strength. Both can be useful, obviously. Money can buy food when you need it, and strength can protect you from the bad guys. But knowledge adds an element that makes life a lot easier. If you know your situation, your environs, and you have useful skills to cope with the problems posed by the situation, you are clearly a leg up on the circumstances. And that's real power, baby!
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