ANOTHER VOICE murray swart There are no stupid questions

CONTRARY to popular belief, there is nothing wrong with being ignorant. We have all found ourselves in the scenario where we see lips move and hear the words pushing past them but deciphering any sort of meaning or sense from them is beyond us.

However, out of fear of ridicule, we make no attempt to broaden our horizons by asking questions. Instead, we ignore the elephant in the room, smile and nod along, knowingly.

Never before has information been so readily available yet so disregarded. In a world where everybody is equally special, it is easy to ignore the facts to preserve the opinion as we associate being uninformed as being wrong and being wrong as being weak.

There is no shame in acknowledging your own limitations, be they mental, physical, spiritual or digital.

The truth is, a know-it-all is as unlikely to learn as someone who craves learning is likely to know it all.

In the age of technology, knowledge is but a click away and everyone has a clicker in their pocket.

Millions of years of evolution has brought us to this moment in time, when the bulk of our combined knowledge has been neatly catalogued and handed to us on a silver platter.

Yet, with this unprecedented access to information, where we are able to learn everything and anything we could possibly dream of, we don’t focus on the greater good of humankind. Instead, we focus on Keeping up with the Kardashians.

It’s very difficult to imagine a world without the internet. The world wide web is an amazing tool that informs, educates and entertains us. A place where all the answers are but a Google search away.

Every note from every lecture, offered by the most prestigious institutes of learning, is freely and readily available.

There is no need to demand a quality education. Its right there, presented in ones and zeros.

Cries for fees to fall are warranted but it is not the cost of academia that is exorbitant. It’s the cost of the piece of paper you get after filling your head with facts and figures that might make you feel and sound knowledgeable but are largely irrelevant in the greater scheme of things.

Don’t get me wrong. Formal education has its place but if you are taught to pretend to know everything rather than to aspire to learn everything, you are missing the point.

There are few more sure fire ways to ruin a good mind than a good education.

All the qualifications in the world mean nothing if they are not practically applied, yet we view considered these pieces of parchment to be worth more than their weight in gold.

Knowledge is power. It can make or break you. Claiming to know more than you do is to your own detriment, especially in a world where all the answers are readily available.

However, this is useless if we don’t take advantage of our complete, combined and catalogued collection of information.

Next time, before guessing, try Googling. The truth is out there and it probably isn’t what you have been lead to believe.

There are no stupid questions. Only stupid answers. There is no shame in being ignorant but there is no excuse for staying that way by choice.