A little learning is dangerous drink deep or not at all

PHOTO COURTESY: A lady reading

I spent the better part of last night reading an essay by Alexander Pope. It was a Friday night when normal kids were in party mode. People my age were busy having fun and releasing the pressure accumulated during the whole week. While I was busy reading things written by a dead man. I was deep in the mind of a man who lived between the year 1688 and 1744. It wasn’t much fun like dancing to the latest Diamond songs, but it made me think about my life and some of the ways I critique people. Alexander pope wrote an essay on criticism as one of his major works. He was responding to the harsh criticism which is usually directed to poem writers by people who cannot, and have never written poems.

In his essay, Alexander tries to explain how the writing of bad criticism hurts literature more than the writing of bad poetry. Critics can kill a good writer and prevent him from exploring his/her potential. However, Alexander also acknowledges that honest criticism, which does not fall prey to envy, can mold writers to be more effective in their works. Alexander also described how many critics have developed bad judgments. He cites pride as the single major contributor to bad and dishonest criticism. Many critics are full of pride which crowds their judgement and makes them develop an attitude of omniscience. They also happen to be shallow people who do not read or study the works they criticize in details. Most of them are myopic, and others blind to their own limitations and defects. Pope notes that most of these critiques become fascinated with the extremes of life and forget the essentials of good poetry. Good poetry is a combination of all its parts, rather than each part by itself. Finally Pope gives advice to the critics and lays emphasis on the importance of studying deeply, and being humble. He advises all critics to read deeply and widely before criticizing a piece of literature. Pope famously mentions that a little learning is a dangerous thing. He warns those who do not wish to drink deep, to keep away from the Pieran spring. When I was reading through this essay, I had time to reflect on myself and the Kenyan society. I would see myself as the critic that Alexander was describing. I could sense how shallow I at times become when debating issues I have not fully understood. I could clearly see the frustrations that Alexander had when he was writing this essay. Although its intended audience was the literal community, I saw the huge similarities and applications in our current society. As Kenyans, we are a community and society that is made up of individuals who are ‘Jacks of all trades but masters of none’. We have failed to embrace the realities of life. Some of these realities include the fact that we can do anything but not everything. We fail to acknowledge that although we are capable of doing anything in the world, we are certainly not equipped to do everything around us. I say this in relation to how we handle issues emerging in the society. When a woman is raped, we all turn into human rights activists. We happen to understand everything that pertains to rape and we give a million solutions and alternatives. We all sympathize with the woman, hang the accused and like the Jews in the time of Jesus, call for the release of Barabbas. When a man is sodomized, we do the same. We are his heroes, his savior and above all, we understand him and give him absolute solutions to his situation. What really excites me is how shallow people get in their arguments. We pretend to speak for the victims, but a simple check on the facts takes us off balance. A simple question I always ask myself is how many people know the names of the victims we vehemently defend? Yet we all get personal, and hurt the victims even more. Like Alexander noted, we drink shallow. Another typical example is how we discuss (or is it react to?) our security situations. When people are attacked in Mandera, we all become army generals skilled in anti-terror techniques. We evolve from being local teachers, carpenters, bloggers, students and even class eight drop outs to being heads of specialized units like the Russian KGB, the American CIA and sometimes the Kenyan NSIS. Within that split second, we fully understand the complexities of terrorism and give absolute solutions on what should have been done to avoid such attacks. We offer our great experiences, probably from the movies, on how to deal with such cases. We become the undisputed security chiefs, who know everything and anything about protecting their citizens. But Kenya is a free democracy where citizens have a RIGHT to their own opinions. Aren’t we? I always pity myself and my community at large when I see how we discuss national matters. We are a shallow community. We live in a country where people read the headlines in the newspapers and understand everything. We don’t care about details; we are the masters of gossip and rumors. We are full of ego and pride because we are knowledgeable. We are the highly educated sailors who understand everything about the seas and oceans. But we forget that even these sailors have little opinions about fishing. They would rather sit and smoke pipe than pretend to understand how fishermen operate. They live that to the fishermen, who are schooled in fishing. They understand that, although they are highly educated in their field, other people will do better things in other fields. The next time you find yourself criticizing the work of another man, just ask yourself what you would have done if you were in their shoes. Question why it happened, under which circumstances it occurred and how well informed you are to talk about it. One of my favorite statements I live with everyday was made during my undergraduate graduation ceremony. The closing remark, after our names were called out was this; “You have now being given permission to read!” It always reminds me that I am a shallow human being and if I want to know something, I have to put effort into learning about it. Every time I open my mouth to say something, I question whether I have fully exercised my duty as a graduate to read! Do I understand what I am talking about, or am I just being like everybody else? Because as Alexander noted: “Fools rush in where Angels fear to trend” and “A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring; There shallow droughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.