Knowledge is power.

This phrase has become quite pervasive in our culture (and others maybe, I’m not sure), and is often used as an educational principle to encourage learning. As far as sayings go, it’s a pretty good one: it’s short, easy to remember, and appeals to our almost universal desire for power. My only issue with it is that it’s wrong.

Or at least, it’s not completely right. A key piece is missing, which is summed up nicely using a quote from the endless wisdom of high school students who whine about things: “When are we ever going to use this?”

Knowledge confers power only in proportion to its application. Knowing how to defuse a bomb is only useful if you encounter bombs that need defusing. Otherwise that knowledge isn’t making you powerful, it’s just making you knowledgeable. Scientific discovery is only as valuable as the applications that it allows: the technological advancements, treatment improvements, or behavioral changes it elicits. Knowledge that doesn’t change behavior isn’t powerful.

You might argue that even if you don’t ever come in contact with bombs that need defusing (hopefully you don’t ever), it is important knowledge to have just in case.

This is a good point: the potential application of knowledge is an important consideration in what we choose to learn. Sometimes what we learn will be powerful in the future, even if it seems pointless or inconsequential now. Alternately, we can go through life not ever needing to know that the U.S. has never lost a war in which mules were used. We can’t foresee all the situations in which we may find ourselves, but we shouldn’t stop ourselves from learning something because we don’t think it will ever be useful. Just don’t confuse being knowledgeable with being powerful.

With all this in mind, however, there is one way knowledge can be powerful without direct application: Education. Those who give others knowledge so that they can apply it are also powerful. If you teach someone how to defuse a bomb, and they go find and defuse a bomb (you know, just on the streets somewhere), then it is still your knowledge that has been applied (this is why teachers are so important; they are powerful people).

The best education isn’t just the giving of knowledge though. It is the instruction of how knowledge should be applied. It instructs how behavior should be changed because of the knowledge gained. The purpose of education isn’t just for us to know better, it’s is for us to do better and to be better.

I want to reiterate that I think the previous aphorism is a pretty good one, I would just make one minor alteration:

Applied knowledge is power.

Mountains have always been a source of inspiration for men and women, regardless of time period or location. The Ancient Greek gods lived on top of a mountain, and Moses received the ten commandments on a mountain. Mountains are often the subjects of poetic and musical musings, or romantic scenes. And for some reason, wherever there are mountains, people always seem to want to climb them. Incidentally, there are several ways we have come to measure and classify mountains, three of which I find particularly interesting.

The classic measurement of a mountain is its elevation, or how high above sea level it is at its peak. (This can be different than how tall a mountain is; the tallest mountain on earth is Mauna Loa, coming in at 33,500 feet, but its elevation is “only” 13,677 feet (most of the mountain being underwater).

A second measurement of a mountain is its prominence, which describes how high above its surroundings it rises. Erebor, the Lonely Mountain in Middle Earth, is the only mountain in its area, so its prominence is equal to its elevation (an estimated 11,483 feet). K2, the second-highest mountain in the world, has an elevation of 28,251 feet, but because it is surrounded by mountains its prominence is “only” 13,179 feet, less than half its elevation.

The third measurement of a mountain is its isolation, which is a measure of how far away the closest point of equal elevation is. The mountain Aconcagua in Argentina has an isolation of 10,264 miles; the nearest point of equal elevation (22,841 feet) is found on Tirich Mir, a mountain in Pakistan. Mount Everest has an isolation of about 23 million miles, the closest it ever comes to Maxwell Montes on Venus (elevation ~36,000 feet). This of course varies depending on the day and your astrological sign.

You may be wondering why I’ve taken the time to regale you with such profound, life-altering trivia. The reason is this: men and women, like mountains, are often described using these same terms.

A person’s elevation describes how high in an organization they are, how much they are esteemed by society, or how enlightened they are. People like Albert Einstein, Gandhi, and Marie Curie all have elevated status because of their intellectual or moral prowess. Like with mountains, elevation is a rather absolute measure of people; Einstein probably would have been considered a genius no matter who his peers were or when he lived.

In contrast, when we speak of prominent figures, we refer to how they stand out compared to those around them. For example, the Big Six in poetry refers to William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron. When considered together, none of them are very prominent; they are equally important in the history of romantic poetry. Their lack of prominence, however, does not equate to a lack of elevation; these poets are all literary geniuses.

This all leads me to this point: rather than seeking prominence, we should set our sights on elevation. Rather than being concerned about how much smarter we are than the person next door, we should strive for excellence no matter our circumstances. We should surround ourselves with people who lift us, challenge us, and inspire us, not who simply make us look good or feel good about ourselves. It isn’t hard to stand out among a group of idiots (unless of course you are an idiot).
And even the most intelligent among us aren’t truly isolated (except maybe right now because Coronavirus); every person you meet is smarter than you in at least one way, and one of the marks of a truly intelligent person is accepting truth and knowledge wherever it may be found.

Language is so full of nuance that sometimes even the most fluent speakers are unaware of the subtleties of what they’re saying. People spend their whole lives studying such nuance, and I am by no means an expert, but I do find it fascinating; the entire meaning of a statement can be changed by altering a single letter (For example, one of my friends once tried to tell someone, in Spanish, that he enjoyed dinner. Instead of saying, “Me gustó” (“it pleased me”), he said, “Me gusté” (“I pleased myself”), which has some sexual connotations…).

One nuance of English that doesn’t seem widely understood but has very interesting (and often important) implications is the difference between continuous and continual. Both have been defined as “without interruption”, but they don’t mean precisely the same thing. The most useful explanation I’ve encountered is this: when you turn a faucet on, water is running continuously, but when a faucet is leaking, it drips continually. If you’re doing something continuously, you never stop doing it, but if you do it continually, you do it intermittently but constantly.

An important implication of this is found in the Book of Mormon. When the prophet Lehi is describing his vision about the Love of God (as represented by the Tree of Life) he describes people “continually holding fast to the rod of iron, until they came forth and fell down and partook of the fruit of the tree” (1 Nephi 8:30). These people made it to the tree by holding continually, not continuously; there were times that they let go, but they still arrived.

The implications aren’t that we should feel fine letting go of the rod, but rather that even in those times that we do let go, when we make a mistake or fall short, we can have hope in our ability to regain our hold and make it back to God and partake of His love.

Parks and Rec is one of my favorite shows in existence. Each character is hilarious in their own way (how can one not appreciate Ron Swanson?), and the writing is rock-solid. I never get tired of watching it.

Throughout the show, Tom Haverford (who famously said “Love fades away, but things… things last forever”) is constantly throwing out ideas for businesses or products he wants to create. Among ideas such as “Saltweens: Saltines for teens”, a club called “club-a-dub-dub”, and “Disco Dairy: Spread the Party”, he at one point pitches “LASIK for fingernails: cut your fingernails once, you never have to cut ’em again.” Ben, to whom Tom is pitching this idea, shuts this idea down because it “seems impossible.” Later in the show, while on one of the classic “treat yo-self” trips, Tom sees an offer for Lasik for fingernails. He exclaims with disappointment that he came up with that idea, and then defeatedly agrees to have it done.

Both of these scenes together only last about 20 seconds, but they struck me recently. We all have ideas and thoughts and plans, but we have to be careful with whom we share them. Often an idea will be brushed off by someone because “it’s impossible” or “there’s no way you could pull it off” or (most dangerously) “that’s not how things work,” when in reality it’s a fabulous idea. Other times an idea will be lauded as the greatest thing since sliced bread when really its on par with jumping off a building with only an umbrella (unless of course you’re Mary Poppins).

It’s hard to determine the value of an idea, to predict whether it’s good or bad, but I’m of the opinion that good ideas are stifled more often than bad ideas are embraced. Nearly every idea that has improved the world was at one point viewed as outrageous, impossible, or nonsensical.

The people around us can be a powerful influence on our success or failure, and when they tell us our idea is stupid, they can be right; sometimes it is the wrong idea. But sometimes, it’s just the wrong people.

Humans are commonly said to have five senses: touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing. This is such a common paradigm that any time someone seems to have an ability outside those five senses, it’s called a sixth sense. You always seem to be able to guess correctly in games of chance? Sixth sense. You always seem to know which way is north? Sixth sense. Your mom can hear you talking back to her under your breath even though you’re in a different country? Sixth sense.
There are two reasons this isn’t a very good model of human senses. First: everyone knows the real sixth sense is the ability to see dead people. Second: humans have a few more than five senses. Some of these other senses include balance, temperature, itch, pain, and more. Even touch is more nuanced than “I feel stuff when I touch it”.

My favorite sense is proprioception. Proprioception is, put very simply, the ability to sense the position of your body in space (inner space, not outer space, unless you do happen to find yourself in outer space). While reading this you know where your legs and hands are, and how they are positioned, without looking at them. You can (maybe) type on a computer without having to look at your hands while you do it. You usually can’t see your own face, but you know what expression you’re making (you can verify this yourself: think of the last time you were numbed up at the dentist and someone took a picture of you “smiling” as you inadvertently drooled all over yourself). The list goes on and on, and all of it is possible because of proprioception.

The reason it’s my favorite is because it’s one of the most underappreciated senses we have, but also one of the most important. In his book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” Oliver Sacks describes a woman who lost her sense of proprioception: she couldn’t walk without looking at her legs and deliberately moving them properly. Her arms would randomly drift around if she wasn’t looking at them, and she had to always look at her hands and fingers to be able to use things. She couldn’t tell what expression her face was making if she wasn’t looking in a mirror (probably leading to some of the most interesting RBF ever).
These may seem more annoying than devastating, but when it comes down to it, any task that you can do without explicitly looking at where your limbs are (cooking, running, shopping, driving, eating, etc.) becomes infinitely harder without proprioception.

Proprioception is more complex than I’ve described it, but hopefully you get a sense of how important it is. Daily life would be nearly unrecognizable without it, yet we take it for granted every day. I’m not saying you should ALWAYS be thinking about how great proprioception is, I’m just saying the next time you find yourself in outer space and you still know where your limbs are, take a moment to be grateful.

One of the important principles in Neuroscience is that of summation. Often, when neurons are depicted in pop culture, a single neuron will fire once, the next neuron will be activated, and then the person’s eyes will bulge and they turn into a big green rage monster. In reality, one neuron firing one time generally isn’t enough for the next neuron to activate; instead, it requires summation.

There are two types of summation: temporal and spatial. Temporal summation is when a single neuron fires rapidly in succession, while spatial summation is when multiple neurons fire at once. In either case, it’s only when enough summation occurs that the next neuron is activated and something actually happens.

This same principle seems to apply outside of the brain as well. We tend to think that we can hear something one time and we’ll remember it, or that it will only take one motivational speech to get us out the door and chasing our dreams. In reality, a single exposure to an idea or influence generally isn’t enough to affect us deeply; instead, it requires summation.

When we want to achieve a goal or change a habit we need to provide summation: we need to be reminded throughout the day, and from several sources. Set alarms, put notes around the house, talk to people about it. Only when we have enough exposure to an idea or influence will it begin to change us, and only then will we be able to make lasting progress.

The word sacrifice may bring to mind a number of images: perhaps you envision a sheep on an altar, or Mayans throwing people into volcanoes, or a child giving a friend the last popsicle on a hot day. Some sacrifices seem small and insignificant, like letting someone cut in front of you in line. Others seem enormous, like giving up a career to take care of a sick relative. Whatever the magnitude, sacrifice is an unavoidable part of life.

We generally think of sacrifice as giving up something that we possess: our time, money, food, clothing, etc. This is what makes sacrifice difficult, and when we focus only on what we’re giving up, we sacrifice more reluctantly and less confidently. We may become angry, resentful, and bitter. But as one writer explained,

‘Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you’re not really losing it. You’re just passing it on to someone else.’

Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

A boy gives up the last popsicle so his friend can have it. Parents give up comforts and pleasures so their children can have more. A soldier gives her life so her fellow countrymen can keep theirs.

When our focus shifts from what we’re losing for ourselves to what we’re giving to someone else, we are empowered to make sacrifices we might not otherwise have the courage or strength to make.

Giving things up isn’t the only way we sacrifice, however; sometimes we take something from others so they don’t have to experience it themselves: a difficult task, an uncomfortable phone call, a punishment. A child takes the blame for his sibling’s mistakes. A parent works tirelessly so her child can go to school and have a better job in the future.

No matter who you are or what you’ve done in your life, I’m willing to bet dozens of people have made sacrifices for you. Whether it’s parents, teachers, friends, or even strangers, many people have given up time, money, pleasure, and more so that you can have what you have and do what you do. Be grateful for them. The only way to waste a sacrifice is to let it be for nothing, to let it pass you by without taking advantage of what has been offered.

The Atonement of Jesus Christ is the most important sacrifice ever made. Christ gave His life so that we could have ours. He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities so that we, if we choose, don’t have to be. He experienced all our pains, temptations, and afflictions so that we don’t have to experience them alone. God gave His Son, and the Son gave Himself, for us. They gave more than we can comprehend so that we can have more than we can comprehend. It was a sacrifice of infinite value. Let us not waste it.

I love Roman history. The epic battles, impressive feats of engineering, and even the language are fascinating to me. So much of what surrounds us in architecture, philosophy, literature, and pop culture is influenced by Ancient Rome; it really has shaped the modern world. One aspect of Roman culture that I especially admire is their concept of honor and virtue. The acts of courage, bravery, and daring they performed, even at the expense of life and limb, inspire me.

One of my favorite figures in Roman history is Gaius Mucius Cordus. According to legend, he lived at the end of the Roman Kingdom and the beginning of the Roman Republic, during a time when a neighboring kingdom, Clusium, was waging war with Rome. Cordus volunteered to assassinate the Clusian king, Lars Porsena, but mistakenly killed an attendant instead, and was captured. When threatened with being burned alive, Gaius Mucius thrust his right hand into the fire and said defiantly,

“See how cheaply men hold their bodies when they set their sights on glory”

Roman Honor: The Fire in the Bones by Carlin A. Barton

Lars Porsena, impressed or frightened at this display of courage and determination, ordered Gaius Mucius to be released and entered into negotiations with Rome. Gaius Mucius, upon returning to the city, was hailed as a hero and given the new cognomen Scaevola, meaning “left-handed”.

I don’t recommend burning your hand (I do recommend being left-handed), but I can’t help admiring Scaevola’s actions; he faced death and pain unflinchingly, placing his family, friends, and countrymen above himself, his own comforts. Working toward something bigger than ourselves allows us to do great things, making sacrifices we might not otherwise make and performing acts we might not otherwise have the courage to perform. We just have to decide what kind of glory we set our sights on, and what we’re willing to do to get it.

In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis asserts

“Hell is a state of mind… And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind –is, in the end, Hell.”

Two weeks ago I thought I was having a stroke: I had a headache, my right hand went numb, and I developed expressive aphasia. At the hospital it was determined I only had a hemiplegic migraine (in more scientific terms, a migraine that sucks real bad) and didn’t need to worry.

But boy did I worry.

Every time something even remotely out of the ordinary happened to my body I panicked. My leg went numb because of the way I was sitting? Panic. I got lightheaded for a moment? Panic. My breathing changed because I was panicking? Panic. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, analyzing every little sensation. It was hell.

My only reprieve was when I got out of my own head: go on a drive with a friend, talk to my family, go to the library. It was like magic.

Luckily the worst of it is over (I think), but it did make an impact. It helped me realize life is better when we get outside of ourselves and focus on who and what is around us. Our minds really can be dungeons, but we have the key to the door, and can see ourselves out.

“Actions speak louder than words”

I think we’ve all heard this at some point, the idea being that what a person does is generally a more powerful indicator of character than what a person says. It’s a good saying, because it’s generally true: when a person’s actions are incongruous with their words, we tend to look at the actions rather than the words to get a sense of who they are.

I believe, however, there is something that speaks louder than actions. For example, suppose you knew someone who gave to the poor, fed the hungry, and served the homeless; you might believe, reasonably so, that this is a good person. If you then found out, however, that they do these things angrily, reluctantly, and churlishly, you might question how saintly they really are and adjust your opinion accordingly.

What someone says is less important than what they do, but what someone does is less important than how they do it.

This has become important to me in a religious sense, as I’ve tried to come to know God better; I’ve read the scriptures, and I think (naively, I’m sure) I know what God as done for me, but I still often feel I don’t know Him very well. It has helped me to think about how God does what He does: God doesn’t just bless us, He blesses us generously. He doesn’t just forgive us, He forgives us eagerly. He doesn’t just love us, He loves us deeply, desperately.

I’m not saying that what someone does isn’t important. Indeed, someone who steals and lies and cheats, even if they do so cheerfully, is worse than someone who gives to the poor, feeds the hungry, and cares for the homeless grudgingly or reluctantly. I’m simply suggesting a companion to the previous adage:

“Adverbs speak louder than verbs”