Why general knowledge is important or history or current affairs.
Limited, this is our biggest constraint. Are we supposed to be born, am I entitled for an education, can I make a career in a particular field of my choice, can I afford the things I like, can I live a bit longer - all depends on your parents ability to care, provide, your ability given the situation and circumstances, in short limits. How much can we abuse nature, how much can one’s patience be tested, how much can one eat, how much can one endure pain, how much is answered by the actual limit. We never know what the limit is unless it can be quantified. Yes, based on bank balance one can limit to a car or a private jet, but can’t say how much of patience one has. The same goes with ability to remember (memory), learn and understand. These un- quantifiable strengths of any human are subjective. For example, one can remember the cost and taste of a pizza that was eaten years ago but not the birthday of a close friend. It’s not really that a pizza is more valuable than a friend but the brain processes the learnings and information based on its priority which is essential due to the limits it has.
Does it matter what happened few years ago or is it more important to know what’s going on at present. One only has time and capability to know, learn and process as much as what the brain limits to. For example, is it important to know the rise and fall of the Roman Empire or details of the present supply issues with chipsets. If you are neither a historian nor someone who has invested in tech hardware companies it really doesn’t matter does it ? No it does not only if you can’t find relevance of everything that’s going on in this world or has happened in the past with your life. Just as much history teaches you how to or how not to do things, current affairs teach you to take advantage of the present reality.
Understanding the past, keeping yourself informed of the present is extremely crucial for our tomorrow. Where do we draw a line as to how much of history is needed as against the current affairs to keep ourselves relevant in this demanding world? Capacity of one’s brain, the limit which we spoke draws the boundaries of this circle, now we just need to split the circle. When one knows nothing of something, it’s irrelevant, when you know too much of something then it’s of course relevant and one tends to incorporate the learnings, in between generally swings in the direction of over thinking. The safe option of course is to know it all, well we don’t have the bandwidth for it. Pick a subject and know as much as possible around it, present status and history of it. Once you have a feeling of knowing enough about it, pick another one. This I guess is the only way of tending to “know it all”.
The feeling of knowing it all is directly related to one’s associations. Humans are relational beings, if you can get a raised eyebrow / “really” / “ I see” or the winner “I didn’t know that” while having dinner with a friend, you can see yourself as a person who has now formulated an equation which gives you the exact proportions of historical knowledge and current affairs for any topic one must have, trust me the equation yields to wrong results but it makes one happy to have deduced it. Isn’t it all that matters?