Are all knowledge rooted in Experience?
Anyone that knows me well knows one thing about me, my ideas are different and upside down but they work. The reason: they come from my sleep. During sleep, I am able to let go of my life experiences and my mind can tackle a problem I am facing with less clouded judgment. I know a lot of people that come up with better ideas after sleeping over it too.
Are all knowledge rooted in experience? This is an age-old debate, my answer is obviously no. The word experience here covers both what an individual studied and what they passed through. The truth is that experience is in terms of time and resources, if we always depend on experience for knowledge, we will always deliver too late and too slowly.
Occasionally, some people come back to me after 2 years to say “you know Dave, that thing you told me to do 2 years ago was actually the right thing to do. If I had done it, I would have had this other better result”.
The unasked question has always been that if I could see their solution, why can’t they see it too since they are the ones experiencing the problem?
I believe we are all born like seeds, seeds come how they can become a tree: when to grow, when to bloom and be fruitful, what to do if a branch is lost, when to shed lives and when to die. We are like that too, born with the full information on what we should do and become in life. The only problem is that we allow noise to cloud our judgment and instincts. The more we grow as adults, the more we acquire noise — environment, negative comments, ailments, societal pressure, peer pressure, anxiety etc the list is endless.
If anyone can totally clear their mind, they can truly access knowledge that is not available to experience. This is not impossible to achieve, we all spent 9 months in the womb during which we never actually walked, breathed, cried, sucked etc. But soon as we are born, that knowledge emerged from instinct.
To move fast enough, we need to rely on instinct, informed instinct. Is instinct always right? no. Instincts can mislead you into making very fatal mistakes. So should we then avoid the knowledge that comes from instinct? No, of course, that is the point of this write-up. Just as we treat knowledge that comes from experience with the utmost respect, we should also treat knowledge that comes from instinct with such respect. That is, research it further, experiment with it, figure out if it will work, then conclude and go with it if the returns are positive.
Adulthood teaches a lot of people to ignore their own instinct, to be an adult you have to look ‘cool’ and ‘formal’: do exactly what everyone else is doing, believe the first report, do not ask questions when you should, do not show emotions, do not click the like button, do not start that project, do not change that career, do not apply for that job, do not quit that job, do not apologize etc
Most adults are caged and unable to find a way out of certain life situations such as career and relationship because their experiences have been restricted by societal standards and they aren’t able to access their instincts and investigate that knowledge source.
