Knowledge
"People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge." -Lao Tzu
Evaluate this statement using evidence from the texts we have studied this year.
posted by Mr. F @ 5:42 AM
9 comments
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Previous Posts
9 Comments:
I definitely agree with Lao Tzu. In Gathering Blue, the power of the Council of Guardians in entirely based on the populace being ignorant of the real world. As soon as Kira finds out what was actually going on, she becomes determined to destroy them. People are content to be ruled by anyone, as long as they remain clueless. As Caesar once said, people will be happy as long as they have ‘bread and circus’, or food and entertainment. This idea has been reflected throughout human history, even as early as the writing of Genesis. God is happily toying with the lives of Adam and Eve until they lose their ignorance and leave. They were content to stay as long as they remained little more than animals. The same thing happens in Lord of the Flies. Piggy, being intelligent, never really is ruled by anyone. The littluns, however, don’t care about the chief as long as they get fruit and can play.
“People are hard to govern because they have too much knowledge.” This quote is applicable to modern life in many ways and is also represented in a variety of texts we have read thus far. For example, in Gathering Blue, the opposite is present. The people are very easily tricked and ruled by the Council of Elders because they are extremely ignorant. In addition, in Genesis, God keeps the faith of the two humans because they are ignorant of everything else. However, one the snake informs them of God’s lies, he loses control of them. In addition, once they eat from the tree of knowledge, they leave the garden and begin to disobey and do things against God’s will. In Lord of the Flies, Ralph only keeps the boy’s obedience until they realize they can have fun on the island. As soon as they are enlightened of the other ways, they slip into what is easier and disobey Ralph. In part of The Perils of Obedience, by Stanley Milgram, one of his experiments involved ‘tester’ humans shocking other humans with electricity. The testers were easier for Milgram to control because they could not see what was happening to their victims. They did not know how much pain they were inflicting on the test subjects. This ignorance led them to follow Milgram’s orders.
I agree with this statement because in some of the texts that we have read this year also argue the statement through the authors writing, such as Gathering Blue, Lord of the Flies, and Genesis.
My argument is valid through the book Gathering Blue because the author writes in a scene in of the novel when Kira gains knowledge about the life that she is really living in. In this story The Council of Guardians keep all sorts of facts from the village, because they want to have the knowledge of the truth of the village. The Council Guardians like to have all the power; they want to be the government of the village. They think that if the truth gets out about the stuff that they have been lying about that they will not have power anymore because they will no longer have an unfair advantage over the members of the village. Overall, in Gathering Blue, if the members did have the real knowledge about the village they would probably end up not being the ‘government’ of the village.
This argument is also stated accurate throughout the whole novel of Lord of the Flies. Imagine what the island would have been like if the young tykes on the island knew more about the world. They don’t have much knowledge as the older tykes because they haven’t had as long of a time to experience the world and how it is run. If they did, r if there was all boys of the same age the island would have been much more difficult to run. I know that that seems hard to imagine, but picture it. A lot more arguing about how things were going to work. For example, Jack and Ralph they had the most knowledge and they fought throughout the whole novel about hunting or being rescued, living for today, or living for the future. In general, Lord of the Flies is not a specific example but if you mess things up and imagine it in a whole different way things would be a whole lot worse if everyone had the same amount of knowledge and wanted different things.
Lastly, In Genesis, Adam and Eve weren’t given as much knowledge as we are given now, or not even compared to as much as God has. First, they ate from the tree of Eden and suddenly were thinking of things that never occurred to them before. God was ashamed of their newly found discovery. I believe that God originally didn’t give them the amount of knowledge that they soon discovered, after eating the fruit, because he thought that it would be hard to establish rules, and more people would just keep breaking them (sinning) so he thought that it would just be easier to ‘govern’ (rule over) people who didn’t have as much knowledge so it would be easier for him to not have to keep dealing with punishments and so on. Unfortunately, the devil (Serpent) probably knew this somehow and decided to trick Eve into eating the fruit and since her husband was Adam she could get him to eat the fruit too. All in all, this ruined God’s originally plan of not giving us a lot of knowledge.
"People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge." -Lao Tzu:
Knowledge is a powerful commodity. Lao Tzu is right; people are impossible to govern because they are too knowledgeable. Multiple sources have come to the same conclusion.
One great example would have to be Gathering Glue; although life was hard, people were uneducated and kept out of the lope, it really did seem to work well. Knowledge was in low-demand and not necessary; things worked swimmingly and the society really seams to be fine with being obvious to what was happening. Rules were strict but all-and-all the society didn’t mind as long as they were doing well.
Another point that I would like to address is Genesis, Adam and Eve could only learn of knowledge through their ignorance; God had warned them. Adam and Eve found life to be impossible without the knowledge proving that knowledge and be a bad thing.
In Lord of the Flies it becomes quite obvious that Lao Tzu was right. Jack tells everyone to fear of the beasts, while Ralph disagreed. But the point that is trying to be made is people cannot be controlled, because all people have different opinions and when Jack feels he becomes knowledgeable he creates a drift and makes people choose sides.
In conclusion Lao Tzu is right people are impossible to govern because they are too knowledgeable. Gathering Glue, Genesis and Lord of the Flies are all examples of why people are impossible to govern.
I agree with jwalsh's comment, but I just wanna ask one question. Isn't true that Kira didn't really wanna destroy the the people responcible, but tell the people the truth through her art?
I didn't mean Kira actually wanted to physically destroy the council member. I meant that she wanted to destroy their power and oligarchic system of rule.
Comment on maiah shea lanfer belisle haley...
I agree with what was said. The examples from the text supported the argument well. In Gathering Glue (Blue), the people didn't have much knowledge about anything other than themselves and their work. And because they didn't have much knowledge, they were easier to govern as was said in the argument. Also, in the argument that referred to the Lord of the Flies, the kids on the island were easy to govern because they too had little knowledge of what was going on. Both of these arguments are good, but neither of them show how it is hard to govern people with a lot of knowledge.
Well, isn't it true that Kira didn't really want to destroy the system of rule either? It is clearly stated that once she finds out about how the council controls people she wants to do something to stop it, but not destroy it. She knows that she can help the rest of the villagers by staying, but she can't destroy the council. Just a thought jwalsh (not that i'm trying to argue a point here or anything).
Comment on Dimarc…..
I agree with what was stated in dimarc’s comment discussing the quote “People are hard to govern because they have too much knowledge.” The examples supported this argument very well, with good examples from the texts. One thing that I noticed was that in the topic sentence it said that the quote was applicable to modern life, but in the body of the comment it never gives an example to that, therefore that probably shouldn’t have been in there, or there should be evidence of that statement.
Post a Comment
<< Home