Why Is Knowledge as Empowerment Important to You and Me?
Because only via empowerment do you and I have genuine, positive control.
I’m always learning something new. And I revel in that.
I learn in different ways from different resources. That includes other people, books, experiences, places, and sometimes combinations of all the above. The lessons are equally as variable.
You probably know of Sir Francis Bacon’s statement, “knowledge itself is power” as “knowledge is power.” But I think that missed the mark because “power” is an obscure, often abused notion.
What’s more, you see far too many examples of people seeking “power” to control, dominate, and do selfish, terrible, unkind, and uncompassionate things.
However, the statement itself is true from a personal perspective. But not in that obscure, vague, frequently misused impression of power. Rather, it’s about empowerment.
Knowledge is empowerment.
Learning in its purest form has nothing to do with control, dominance, and knowledge to do anything at all outside of yourself. It’s about what you gain and can do with that knowledge to advance your life experience in a meaningful way for yourself.
The more you open yourself to learning, the more empowerment you gain. When you’re more empowered, you are more self-reliant. Self-reliance leads to greater equal footing for all.
Those who seek “power” in the sense of business and government leaders recognize the truth of this. That’s why they frequently go out of their way to “protect” knowledge – keep the people ignorant, keep them disempowered. Banning books, for example, is never about “protecting” the young or similar bullshit – it’s about maintaining the status quo.
However, you have a choice. You have the ability to be empowered and do amazing things. Learning is key in this endeavor.
Learning is empowering
As an avid reader, I devour books. One of the best parts of my day is my 30-60 minutes of reading first thing every morning. I’m always reading 2 books at a time – 1 fiction, and 1 nonfiction. And I find myself learning new things from both.
But this is just one small part of my learning experience. I also learn through simple interactions.
Whenever you are with other people, they teach you things. Sometimes this is utterly subtle (and largely lost on you) and passive. Sometimes it’s blatant and active. For example – attending a panel, talk, or lecture is all about active learning.
As much as I know about various topics that interest me, there is far, far more that I don’t know. Some people become distraught at this notion. I love it because it means there’s always something new to be learned.
Having just attended a con, I both sat on and sat in multiple panels. There was some amazing and useful information gleaned from all that, and processing is going to take some time. The lectures I attended were both wonderfully presented and informative.
Learning improves my work as a writer and storyteller. But there is a downside – and that’s realizing that new things you learn might conflict with what you already know. And that is where “power” is often weaponized over empowerment.
Knowledge as empowerment over power
Change is the one and only constant in the Universe. But many people find that difficult to accept because change frequently causes conflict between what you know and what you knew. That conflict can be extremely disconcerting, particularly among people who learn more subtly and passively than blatantly and actively.
You probably know someone who felt they stopped learning things after formal schooling. After classrooms, lectures, and homework, active learning ended. You also likely see those people as stubborn, opinionated, and maybe even sheeple. Ignorance is bliss – save when it’s not, which tends to be nearly always when you get right down to it.
In part, because of new things I learned, I’m struggling to share this. Why? Because I find myself straddling an invisible, thin line between lecturing and sharing. Rather than offering self-help platitudes and my-way-is-the-best-way BS, I’m seeking to only share this idea for you to explore it on your own, in your own way.
That’s what empowerment is. Nobody can give it to you, nor can you take it from anyone. Rather, you give it to yourself by choosing it.
Even passive learning, when you apply mindfulness to it, can empower you. That’s because mindfulness is conscious awareness of your own thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. When you use your conscious awareness consciously, in the now, the passive becomes active. Thus, you can learn from it – and allow it to empower you.
Power is often abused by those who think they have it to disempower and control what they have no true control over. Unless it’s ceded to them – which disempowerment does.
Convoluted? No, not really. But you need to be open to learning and the conflict that might ensue.
The conflict and negativity, positivity, and neutrality
Everything that you learn in and of itself is neutral. The thing you learn is just that – a thing. It doesn’t matter what that is – it is. And in simply being, it’s neutral.
What you do with what you learn directs negativity and positivity. But that begins from the place between the extremes. That will be different for you than it is for me because our perceptions of reality are vastly different (even when they’re similar).
Likewise, both of us exist between any given extremes. Good and bad, large and small, wise and foolish, positive and negative, etc. Those extremes aren’t opposite sides of coins with narrow spaces between them. They’re opposite sides of a cylinder, which itself is flexible (because extremes are often flexible themselves. Yesterday’s good can be tomorrow’s bad through no actions of your own).
One of the greatest things about empowerment is the control you have over how you direct what you learn. Positive, negative, or neutral? You choose.
One important caveat – neutrality doesn’t empower. When it just is, it does nothing. That’s why remaining neutral in the face of overwhelming negativity will inevitably leave you disempowered.
Empowerment is a choice. And not making a choice – though a choice itself – doesn’t activate it and anything you might gain from it.
Learning gives me new ideas to work with. I choose to share these things with you because I desire for you to be more able to empower yourself. Knowledge is empowerment – when you choose to make use of learning.
Why bother? Because who but you is experiencing your life for you?
Recognizing how knowledge is empowering isn’t hard
It’s all about working with mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, and intentions to direct your actions.
When you take the things that you are learning – passively or actively – and mindfully examine them, you choose how to direct them. Knowing that what you learn is neutral – and you can choose to direct it positively or negatively – you can use that to make your life experience better, more exciting, engaging, and ultimately how you desire it to be.
This empowers you – and in turn, your empowerment can empower others around you. Then that can expand to change the bigger picture matters, too.
Taking an approach to positivity and negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts matters in a way to open more dialogue. In that form, you can explore and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
Lastly, the better aware you are of yourself in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can also open those around you to their empowerment.
To me, that’s a worthwhile endeavor to explore and share.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the four hundred and seventy-first entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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