The Dark Side of Knowledge

The Dark Side of Knowledge


Let’s take a walk. Let’s take a walk down my favorite walking trail that is a converted railroad bed (The Monon). Instead of mighty steel monsters belching billows of fearsome black smoke while clamoring up and down gleaming rails that caused the earth to shake and quiver as they made their way to and fro, the railroad legacy is now a rail free path with a grown-up canopy of trees and flora complete with busy critters that hardly takes notice of Nike clad feet softly treading to and fro in search of exercise and solace instead of forgotten steam engines straining for commerce and schedule. If you happen to get on the trail in the early morning, most of the indigenous critters you see are fully engaged in their business and are not in the least alarmed with the passage of fashion conscious bipedal critters aimlessly meandering to and fro along the trail. More likely than not, you will hear the absolutely beautiful clear notes of Red Cardinals birds singing away to the absolute delight of the walking and jogging bipedal creatures. I always like to think that the Red Cardinal birds are singing their beautiful song for my pleasure but I know in reality that they (the Red Cardinals) are instead sending out a warning to others of their kind to stay the hell away from their territory. Knowing this reality is the dark side of knowledge. I would rather believe that the songs the birds were singing were because the birds were happy and the singing was a declaration to all who could hear that the world is a beautiful place that merited the gorgeous notes being sprayed into the wind. I would rather believe this because it enriches my soul. But the knowledge of why they (the birds) are really singing only enriches my mind. Sometimes it is much better to have one’s soul enriched rather than having one’s mind enriched. There are many examples of the dark side of knowledge other than the whimsical example above. Take, for example, the knowledge of evolution as first detailed by Charles Darwin in his seminal book, On the Origin of Species. This knowledge of the evolution of life into more complex life, and the notion that survival of the fittest is the basis for the natural selection of those chosen to evolve, was all the intellectual rage in the time of Hitler and this knowledge became the basis for his book, “Mein Kampf”. Mein Kampf would become the political foundation for the Nazi movement that promoted the practice of eugenics to help create the master (German) race because it was believed that natural selection for evolution by survival of the fittest was as applicable to human races as it was to lower animal species. Therefore, to the Nazis, the German people were the fittest of all of the human races and elimination of inferior races and undesirable humans was only the fittest humans being naturally selected in accordance with the natural selection process described by Darwin. All of this knowledge of evolution and natural selection by survival of the fittest became the basis and justification for the murdering and killing of millions and millions of innocent people by the Nazis and German people in order to evolve into the “Master Race.” Again, the dark side of knowledge. A more contemporary example of the dark side of knowledge is the economic collapse that we are currently undergoing. Nefarious people, driven by greed, have used the knowledge of economics, finance and human behavior to concoct ruinous financial instruments in order to gain monetary advantage over others. Rather than to use knowledge to benefit all, the dark side of knowledge drove supposedly honorable people to ruin million and millions of innocent people. Other knowledge, such as how to split the atom and release the power of the universe, was first used to build a bomb in order to kill people rather than use the knowledge for a benign purpose. In this case, the dark side of knowledge may well doom us all.