The Unfortunate Limitations of Intellect

It holds true that when you know less, life is much, much simpler. I remember, one of my college professors mentioned in her discussion,

"Knowledge is happiness! You should be proud that you know all of these things!"

She must have a very unconventional way of living because that is not true at all, especially if you work in the field of the sciences, or at least live in a country where scholars are numbered. Despite this, I respect that some people do consider their knowledge as "something that induces pleasure" or "the ultimate good" but I feel bad because most of the time those people have a very conceited image of themselves and are prone to acting like pretentious dabblers in their respective fields.


Contrary to this, however, I have always been very afraid of things that I do not have any means of knowing, like the future. I am very afraid of the future because I cannot control it; I am no believer of destiny so I do not rely on "signs" that this or that will happen. And I am very particular about my life. I like planning things down to the minutest of details because my mind is always a puddle of information that I never have enough time to sort out. When I actually have time, I spend it mapping out the next ten years of my life, which confuses me even more because even though I know what I want, I still have to think about various conditions in taking it, like economic and social matters. Right now my best bet is to graduate, get a master's degree and a job that pays well, then retire early so I can pursue writing. I also considered going to med school but time is too precious.

The heartbreaking part about working as a scientist is not having enough freedom. With the growth of the world's knowledge on itself, the amount of things we need to study is slowly dwindling. Consequently, research centers will need less staff, and job openings for scientists will become rare. It is worse if we are not academically outstanding students. We cannot demand anymore, not in this age, for jobs that will interest us. We get a job according to what the company needs, especially if we are researchers. We have to be useful to get a grant, and being useful entails studying environmental and physiological phenomena that are not even that exciting to begin with.

Human intellect, at times, is not as useful as we make it out to be.

I have realized recently that I might not be as big a supporter of democracy as I thought I was. In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (a favorite), humans are assigned to different social and intellectual classes at conception to achieve an efficient and homogenized society. I would like that. We cannot always be who we want to be (or do what we want to do) even if Tumblr says otherwise, because we have physical and mental limitations. We can easily overcome psychological and emotional trauma, but we cannot change our genetic makeup. And from that realization stems the inebriated human revolutionary thinking because we all want to be gods somehow.

(But) if we already controlled society into thinking that what you are born with is all you are and ever will be, we can be at peace. No one will know what life is like had they been given choices, so no one will complain. There will be no incidence of crime or corruption, and everyone will be happy.