Knowledge is power and power is knowledge is just a catchy phrase. Just because I know I need power this by and of itself will not produce electricity in my house. Knowledge or rather acknowledgement of a need could perhaps lead to providing for that need but that's about it.

There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom and wisdom is not acquired. Maybe it can be attained but no sum of knowledge adds up to wisdom.

To give an example: Marie Sklodowska Curie discovered radioactivity over one hundred years ago. It was one of the most groundbreaking discoveries in the history of science that opened the way to multiple new scientific disciplines such as nuclear physics and has had huge impact on modern as well as post-modern times with global repercussions to human survival as a human race and individual lives provided for by means of nuclear power plant generated utilities and health care diagnostics and treatments for cancer.

Marie Sklodowska Curie published her discovery and I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't have been better not to share that knowledge. Mrs. Curie herself died of cancer which might have been the result of undue exposure to radioactivity during her scientific experiments leading to her discovery.

How many more lives have been lost either from untoward radioactivity or political maneuverings around nuclear weapons of mass destruction not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki disasters and the results of continuing to test atomic bombs with catastrophic effects to agriculture over large population areas.

So knowledge is one thing and application of that knowledge is quite another. Knowledge just like freedom requires responsibility and foresight.

I am not sure what sort of power we as humans can pride ourselves on if it is to lead to either loss of lives or suffering. I am not sure if Marie Sklodowska Curie's discovery and new knowledge it offered leading to harnessing of nuclear power energy sources was worth it in view of a number of nuclear power plants accidents alone starting with Chernobyl in 1986.

Once such power is unleashed it cannot be contained and somehow it doesn't seem to me we are responsible enough or at all as a human race to even consider any sort of nuclear weaponry looking at the results of over 100 years experience with human generated and mismanaged extraneous radioactivity all over the world we have had so far.

Knowledge needs wisdom in its applications so that not just any power but powerful results could be generated, contained and preserved for the betterment of people who are people all over the globe despite or in lieu of their politics.

Learn more about this author, Kim Hamilton.
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