To Boldly Go

Albert Einstein once asserted: “Information is not knowledge.” This relationship with commonly accepted truths and stagnation exemplifies the need for constant, unending inquiry. The minute that we assume that something is correct, we place our trust in others and yield to inactivity. Almost everything that once was, has now been disproven through the constant progression of the human mind. If we accept current knowledge as an absolute, unchanging certainty, then complacency will soon give way to ignorance. The use of memory will almost always lead to mental lethargy. Personal experience can likewise lead to incomplete understandings. Early observers of the Sun, watched as it appeared to move from east to west each day, and assumed that the Sun revolved around the Earth. Others would later prove that the Sun was the center of our Solar System. However, even this information should not be acknowledged as absolute either, or else humans would fall prey to the same naïve mindset as those in the Middle Ages. There was a time when Rome was the central religious and political authority in the West, based on the assumption that there was one Catholic God. At another point in time, Karl Marx was revered as a prophet and the foremost authority in history, economics, and politics. Freud's landmark discoveries were once thought of as undeniable elements in modern psychology. All of these facets of the human experience have been denounced or disproved at one time or another. Knowledge represents a ever-changing, adaptive process of applying the mind to the unsolvable mysteries that abound in the universe. The answers and solutions, the mere information, will never remain constant, or endure for very long. To challenge one's own memory and personal experience is where true progress lies. A process that seems at once counter-productive and counter-intuitive, will only enable the mind to venture into unknown territory and discover true potential and possibility. The thirst for these unobtainable truths, however, will always prompt humans to further examine and analyze the enigmas that surround them.