Is Knowledge a Burden or Benefit?
Knowledge has become an integral part of our lives. Every kid born has to attain knowledge to survive in this world. In our lifetime I am sure all of us would have asked ourselves ” Is knowledge a burden or benefit”. It is a debatable point. There are two sides to every coin. You don’t know whether you’ll get a heads or a tails until you flip it, knowledge works in the same way. There are positive and negative aspects about having knowledge, some of them are discussed below.
Knowledge has transformed our lives. We live in a world which could not be built without having knowledge. The lives we live have truly proven that ‘Knowledge is power’. A very significant development due to knowledge which we all come across is the technological development. Mankind has improved agriculture,industry,transportation,communication,the list is almost endless. Such developments have improved our lifestyles by leaps and bounds. Some of the things we have these days were called Magic a hundred years back. Life Sciences has given us ailments to diseases which were thought to be incurable. Knowledge has given life.
With all this benefits of our knowledge we have also paid the price.
Our knowledge has also been the cause of various catastrophic events. For example the invention of atom bomb. It needed the best possible physicists to achieve success. Einstein who was undoubtedly one of the greatest in his fields did not take a part in this project solely because he could not take the guilt of the death of millions. The father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer once claimed, “I am Death, the destroyer of the world.” for he understood what a huge burden knowledge has and can lead to. We often venture into projects in which we have too little knowledge. Mankind did not have the knowledge of the effects of the use of the atomic bomb. We had created an ultimate weapon using our knowledge but lacked the knowledge of using it to our benefit.
Knowledge is definitely important and this is an undeniable fact. However, conversion of knowledge into benefit or burden depends on us. We must make the choice which decides if knowledge gives life or takes it because it is a mega weapon which has the power to both create and destroy.
Sayandeep Biswas
British International College
