Information Tsunami is the Elephant's Backside - Safe only at a Distance

Safe only at a Distance

THE INFORMATION TSUNAMI. We don’t know anything. This is true even as we are engulfed in the Information Tsunami through our newspapers, television, radio, cable channels, blackberries, twitter, facebook, google, blogs and chatrooms. "Surely, after so much data, SURELY, we must KNOW something!", they will protest. But they doth protest in futility.

I DON’T KNOW NUTHIN’! Unless we experience something, we do not really ‘know’ it. We know that a plane can fly, but we don’t know how to engineer and build one. And most of us don’t know how to fly a plane too. Come on, we don’t even know the number of hair on our body. So we don’t even really know our physical selves, much more anything (or anyone) else.

THE ELEPHANT AND THE THREE BLIND MEN. To cast knowledge as a permanent edifice in your mind is a dangerous thing. It is not permanent at all. Knowledge, especially empirical knowledge based on human observation of sight, smell and sound is only mere experimentations – so you have the famous story of the Elephant and Three Blind Men, each man imagining the elephant to be something else. My advise is never stand too close to the Information Tsunami. Its like the elephant's backside... you never know what might dump on you.

THE ONLY THINGS THAT IS CERTAIN IS PROBABILITY. Whether you are chasing some atoms down the atomic collider or seeking the Truth and Beauty of God held in the hands of saints, your chase shall never end, your library shall never be complete and your scholarly pursuit shall remain that till the day you die, a pursuit. If you think you can find certainty through analytical deduction and the rigours of academic exercise, you are mistaken. All you shall ever find are probabilities. As a wise and dead man once told me – Reason can see the dots, but it is your heart that will trace and link the dots together.

CIRCUIT BREAKER. Seekers of spiritual knowledge are more safeguarded because their entire endeavour is based on their own admission of imperfection, and in their journey to the perfection that is God’s Alone. They understand that each moment of knowledge is an instance of blessing where their internal circuit is complete to say or do that single thing at that single point in time. Thereafter the circuit breaks, and their ‘understanding’ or ‘knowledge’ is suspended – held in abeyance until God completes the circuit once again. And just because God does it all the time, these people do not take for granted that God will do it again. That is why such people are saints and people flock to them. They are not stained by the blot of religious hubris or material arrogance.

So you can apply this mortal limitation even to this blog. I am telling you nothing you don’t know already. The Ocean of the Lord is So Vast, and our boats are so small. True knowledge is swimming in the Sea of Mercy and picnicking on the Shore of Contentment. Today, I am bringing the sandwiches, sunshine… What are you bringing?

Hehehe. Have a lovely day, sunshine. Pax Taufiqa.