Essential Knowledge

It is just based on my observation.

But at times, you don’t need an extensive research to prove a point.

And my point is … with more ways, opportunities and avenues to get information the young people of today, and the older ones too, do not know many things that are basically essential knowledge.

What is essential knowledge?

To me, the answers to these questions are essential knowledge, good info to know. What is the capital of China? Who is George Washington? What is the biggest continent? What is the world’s tallest mountain?

Now, you may say it is not important to know all these.

Well… with the world getting “smaller’ with technology making it easy for people to communicate even though they are thousands of miles apart, we just have to know about the lives of our potential business partners in Buenos Aires, Warsaw and Guangzhou. If you go window shopping at Pavilion in Kuala Lumpur, chances are you will bump into expats from India. And every other hour you will smile when you see your Nepalese security guard. They will feel good if you know a thing or two about their capital cities, their leaders and the food they love.

It is not just that, there is a lot of important information, essential information, knowledge, that one needs to know, but many prefer to go for the non-essential ones.

Try this… Go to coffee shops or mamak restaurants and you can see friends having ice-blended coffee and not talking to one another as they are busy surfing the net. Chances are, they may not be seeking essential knowledge. I actually checked (without them knowing) and found that they were doing the classic narcissistic thing of admiring themselves -- updating their facebooks and smiling at their photos. Nothing wrong … Just that, there was no quest for essential knowledge.

I am not done yet.

Recently I asked a group of late 20-somethings the following questions:

You know who AK Jailani Kengkang is? You know who Ayyapan is? Billie Holiday? Queen Sirikit? Indira Gandhi? Jimmy Carter? Andy Warhol?

None of them had any idea who these people are.

I just want to say thank you to my dad who bought me the huge collection of encyclopaedia Britannica when I was in primary school in 1970. That opened up my window to the world…

Next… What is the capital of Poland? What is a platypus? Where is Lake Titicaca? … zzzzz…