Prompt: Can knowledge be a burden rather than a benefit?
Knowledge is a powerful weapon. Use it correctly and it can unlock wonders of the universe, however if used cynically, destruction will avail. Something that powerful is always a burden. Knowledge can be a burden that wears on all people’s shoulders.
In the past, people used to live happy, free lives, granted they might not live to be 106, it was still a life worth living. Today, depression rates have significantly risen and it’s because knowledge has opened new technological doors, but so few are able to walk through that door. Having the knowledge of something bigger and better, yet knowing it is not possible to manifest the newest IPad or IPhone, wears on the minds of a human being. Consider a boy who found out his dad cheated on his mom; his mom doesn’t know about the affair and his father asks him to keep it a secret. Now the boy faces an ultimatum: tell his mother and break up a family or hide his father’s dirty little secret and bare the burden of lying to his mother. Neither choice is a good one, the knowledge of that that affair wears on that boy’s brain for a long time.
Most think of knowledge as the answer to all prayers ever made. More scientific knowledge allowed cancer patients to have a greater chance of surviving and increased knowledge about the planet, led humans to create more ways to keep the necessities around. However, during the Industrial Revolution when all the new inventions made a debut, people thought it was a wonderful thing, however, the years of pollution and deforestation has made an unpayable poll on earth. Although cancer patients have an increased survival rate, the recovery path after chemo is a long and painful one, and even that may not work. Knowledge is more powerful than any nuclear weapon, country, or person and all that power is a burden because right and wrong differ from person to person.
What is right in someone’s eyes may be completely opposite to another. Therefor there is no way to please everyone, making knowledge a burden that should only be borne by a select few.
Thank you, please grade on a scale 1-6, like the SAT graders.