Knowledge - The Sum of What is Known, Great Men and Women

_{Main Entry: knowl·edge}

_{Pronunciation: \ˈnä-lij\}

_{Function: noun}

_{Etymology: Middle English knowlege, from knowlechen to acknowledge, irregular from knowen}

_{Date: 14th century}

_{1 obsolete : cognizance
2 a (1) : the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association (2) : acquaintance with or understanding of a science, art, or technique b (1) : the fact or condition of being aware of something (2) : the range of one's information or understanding <answered to the best of my knowledge> c : the circumstance or condition of apprehending truth or fact through reasoning : cognition d : the fact or condition of having information or of being learned <a person of unusual knowledge>
3 archaic : sexual intercourse
4 a : the sum of what is known : the body of truth, information, and principles acquired by humankind b archaic : a branch of learning}

_{synonyms knowledge, learning, erudition, scholarship mean what is or can be known by an individual or by humankind. knowledge applies to facts or ideas acquired by study, investigation, observation, or experience <rich in the knowledge of human nature>. learning applies to knowledge acquired especially through formal, often advanced, schooling <a book that demonstrates vast learning>. erudition strongly implies the acquiring of profound, recondite, or bookish learning <an erudition unusual even in a scholar>. scholarship implies the possession of learning characteristic of the advanced scholar in a specialized field of study or investigation <a work of first-rate literary scholarship>.}

O.K. we've got our definition, but where do we get knowledge... as limited as it may be? We can't all have graduated at the top of our class from two ivy league colleges, or completed our multiple masters degrees in Applied Science, Applied Politics, Business, Chemistry, Communications, Engineering, Finance, Human Psychology, Humanities, Mathematics, Music, Physics, Philosophy, Science, Teaching, Theology... on infinitum.

How about a single Masters degree in Knowledge ... what if certain basic knowledge was required before you become lawyer, bricklayer, or doctor? Oh, wait a minute there is such a thing... a law degree, a medical degree (both with speciality areas of practice)... a bricklayer gets training experience either on the job or a trade school.

That's a good start, you can get knowledge in your area of interest... para-sailing, boxing, gardening, meditation, veterinary science, pharmacist... this is good. How about reporters and police officers... journalism and criminal justice degrees. Knowledge seems available everywhere in all shapes and formats.

Schooling, on the job training, trade schools, family trades handed down through generations... wine-making, farming, retail, real-estate, banking. This is a great way to gain specific knowledge and each generation adds something new to the entrepreneurship of the family business with the addition of new knowledge.

I like this search for knowledge it is helpful to know that knowledge is readily available for anyone who wants to bask in its richness and truth. The simple knowledge that you know what you know because you worked hard at the accomplishment of gaining knowledge.

But what about those who presume knowledge and still insist on basking in its richness without the truth of actually having worked to gain real knowledge. The purveyors of fact-less, baseless, rootless, unsubstantiated, groundless, mindless, fact-biased, unfounded, misleading, non-knowledge .

A misrepresentation of knowledge is a very serious offense against humanity when done so with knowledge and forethought.

"It means a false statement of fact made by one party to another party, which has the effect of inducing that party into the contract."

I am inclined to believe this is exactly the non-knowledge that is being represented as truth by tea-partiers, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, other Fox Noise commentators, Orily Taitz (other birthers), some republican congressmen (and women), inducing the support of their party followers to buy into their contract of lies.

Oh, that Yeats was right...

"I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher."
William Butler Yeats

Mahatma Gandhi
(1869 - 1948) Indian Nationalist Leader

"We must become the change we want to see in the world."

Susan B Anthony

(1820 - 1906) The women's movement's most powerful organizer

"Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less."

Albert Einstein
(1879 - 1955) Physicist & Nobel Laureate

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."

David Bohm
(1917 - 1992) American Physicist & Philosopher

"Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture."

Barack Obama

Nobel Lecture, Dec. 10, 2009

"We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it's easy, but when it is hard."

Edward De Bono
(b. 1933) Psychologist & Author

"Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it."

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

(b. 1933) United States Supreme Court Justice

"I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire [seek to reach a goal] and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons,"

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay