Knowledge Equity

Good morning everyone, it’s August 12, 2020. Breakfast is done, and just beginning my 2nd cup of coffee! Today looks like it’s going to be a beautifully hot day, not a cloud in the sky. I sit again this morning on the same road I have been on for many mornings. Where’s that? It’s somewhere in northeastern Saskatchewan, a road where the broom grass has not yet been cut. Just across a broken down page wire fence is the remains of the cement foundation where my mother attended school. Thoughts at the moment are that this is the perfect lead-in for all of those people that state “Well, everything happens for a reason!”

Early morning thoughts, I hope that I can recapture some of them, my day started at 5:30 AM. Not a cloud in the sky and the sun would soon be coming up. Remembering a conversation about five years ago. An elderly couple in their mid-80s had invited me over that afternoon. Perhaps about two hours of conversation. They were inquisitive and eager to know more. As I was about to leave, she asked, “You mean I will not see my grandchild that passed away when she was two?” I simply looked at her and said nothing. There was another interaction, which took place approximately 15 years ago. It was an afternoon coffee at the farm home of a couple that I had attended high school with. As I was about to leave, she looked at me and said, “Howard, you could be so happy if you would see things our way.” Perhaps nearly 10 years ago I received a response to an email his email response was his opinion of my stand personally, which did not give the option of accepting “faith”. His simple response was this, “Howard, you have nothing to hang your hat on.” These are three examples, I’m sure that I could come up with at least a dozen more. In the two face-to-face interactions, I saw simply “a deer in the headlights” blank stare. Let this set the stage for my continuing dialogue.

I’m sure we all have an understanding of the term “equity”. In broad terms. Equity is something that we acquire throughout our lifetime. It is usually within the context of wealth, which can be exchanged for currency. Everyone understands that if you invest a small amount throughout your lifetime that compound interest will give you a sizable amount at some time in the future. Throughout your lifetime. This acquired equity allows you to leverage, buying power, control. For many, it is the essence of “authority”.

May I present to you the concept that knowledge is a more sustainable form of “life’s” equity. Consider that from the earliest age, even before you have learned speech, your learning about the world around you. Everything that you acquire and observe your young mind is soaking up like a sponge. Our species is not unique in this regard. All that you learn is the foundation for your future understanding and survival. You don’t need language to understand that if you touch the stove and it’s hot, you will feel pain. You’ve already learned this by watching others. The acquisition of your mental equity is a subconscious subroutine continually running in the background. Nobody needed to push the start button.

So what happened? Somewhere along the line in the early years, the aforementioned natural process has been hijacked. Why do I say hijacked? Before I proceed into detail of how this took place. I’ll give you some examples. Three of the examples have already been described above. The elderly woman, the high school classmate, and the email from a childhood farm neighbour. In the first instance, I have absolutely no understanding of their earlier years. They are now in their mid-80s. I can only observe their current circumstance. In the second instance, this couple that I have no one since my early childhood grew up in an Evangelical Lutheran Christian community. They have remained in this community throughout their entire lifetime. The pivotal anchor of their personal lives has always been there. “Faith”. The third example, the farm neighbour, is of the same early childhood background. This last person had stated long ago in an email, that he found his place at about age 12 at a summer Bible camp. Through many emails, he had described how most of what he learned in high school was totally useless to him. Everything he knighted to know about life was firmly set in place from that early childhood experience at Bible camp.

The hijacking of naturally acquired knowledge equity described above is the most common path for all those that define themselves as having “Christian values”. From the early teen years, and continuing for the rest of their life, all of life’s goals and aspirations can be attained by adherents and conformity to “faith”. Everything that you wish for, “because you’re a good Christian”, will be given careful consideration and your dreams will be fulfilled. Basic math? Yes. You need that to complete your tax returns and understand statements that you receive that require payment. In most cases. Everything beyond this basic understanding goes out the window. The simple response, many times in a tone of extreme frustration is “why do I need to know that?” By the time the young mind has experienced the first 10 or 15 years of “faith” life, everything beyond their normal everyday experiences will lead to frustration. As described in previous writing, the trained bonobos, the game played in the temper tantrum when one observed unfairness. These individuals now deeply steeped in the ways of community and faith, simply observe the world around them. They observed the world around them the way the bonobo observed fair play in the game it was taught to play. At the drop of a hat anything beyond their basic understanding leads to hostility and a full-blown temper tantrum. My brother some time ago had stated, “those in AA seem to understand the world”. He went on to elaborate that these people were socially the most acceptable in the community. They were the best people to work with. Yes compliant they are. As in your family pet that has been housetrained, people in AA programs are certainly housetrained. Without much detail, housetrained simply means that they are broken. As a horse being broken to accept a saddle. People in these programs are what society is salvaging, and establishing conformity, to “fit into the way we do things around here”. “The way we do things around here”, is the essence of local geographical authority. Enough discussion on this last example, for it, is perhaps for a future topic with much detail.

“Everything happens for a reason”. Yes, I happened to be sitting on this gravel road this morning because some weeks ago I had a loosely developed plan. Wonder for a few months during the summer, retake some photographs from five years ago with now acquired better camera equipment. Renew my driver’s license at the local SGI agency, and then continue on with my summer. The reasons are simple enough and flexible. I can change them at any time, there is no divine intervention here.

Back to the original topic of your “knowledge equity”. Everything that makes up who you are today, as a result of the acquisition through your lifetime, both academic and observed experiences. The more observations and experiences you have the broader the base to arrive at decisions and conclusions. Those that have had their early lives hijacked in their early teens simply have stopped acquiring and remembering their experiences. They have stopped building the foundation of knowledge equity. Everything is easy, everything happens for a reason, just “Pray”. From the earliest teen years, much of our Western society has been hijacked. Peer pressure has firmly established mental subroutines. Learning is hard, faith is easy, wishful thinking will get you what you want. You are one of us, our faith community supports you. The early mind has been hijacked by the early stroking of the immature ego. The sense of belonging is there. I don’t need to learn anything, everything I need will be given to me because I belong here with these people. If you were to present on a piece of paper a complex algebraic equation to the individual who dropped out of high school in grade 8, they would simply exhibit a glassy stare. Everything on the paper would be worthless and meaningless to them. If the individual is of a type “A” personality, a temper tantrum would soon ensue. Yes, you do not need complex algebra when you pick up the shovel to dig the hill of potatoes. The danger exists when the person with the shovel in hand cannot accept that higher understanding does have a place in our everyday world. This goes hand-in-hand with the realization that they have chosen their path. Some accept their chosen path and have abdicated their ability to learn more. Others are of their personal opinion that they are on the only path, the “righteous path”. The concept of good and evil, is used by them in their everyday world to defend their current understanding. Everything that challenges their current understanding must be the encroachment of evil. Coincidentally I have crossed paths with those in this small rural community, that is totally oblivious to much of the outside world. Their only source of knowledge is to listen to the local FM Christian radio station. For lack of a better description, they simply live in their own gated community.

Throughout our Western civilized world there exist pockets just like this. They have continued from the times of early colonial settlements. This is the product of colonialism. The foundation established centuries earlier to prove beyond all doubt “white supremacy”. Perhaps better defined as hereditary hatred. Generation after generation the carnage continues. Throughout social groups individuals when hearing a language that they do not understand, immediately fall into their own internal subroutine of hatred and anger. At hereditary behaviour. As a senior classmate from my past stated many times, “dammit if they are coming to Canada they should learn English first.” We are all products of our colonial past. Therefore we are all victims. There are a few who do venture outside of the communities of their childhood, and even fewer that come to an understanding that as a species we are all one.
“The human genome is our shared inheritance.” ~Carl Sagan

It’s only 9 AM, maybe I’ll make the 3rd cup of coffee?
Maybe with practice, I will acquire the habit of daily “dumping”. Where do we go from here? I have no idea! What appears to be blatantly obvious, is that “the sun is going to come up again tomorrow morning”.
Perhaps a final comment. “Just when you think you know it all, that you have learned enough, then and only then must you accept that you are deluded”. Learning is a lifelong endeavour when you stop learning and begin listening in your own echo chamber, then instead of becoming a solution, you become part of the problem. Without contributing to your knowledge equity account throughout your entire lifetime, you are simply disadvantaged. My most recent personal conclusion is that there are so many that cannot be communicated with. Their lack of knowledge equity and their own echo chambers are so deeply entrenched that the only option available is to simply walk away from the relationship.