What is a Slogan ?

 9297  What is a slogan ?   20210707

At first, I was not sure about the slogan until I read a story about a school headmaster who ran a high school for girls in the mountains and made all of them a chance to enter university and never return to the poor mountain villages anymore. 

The slogan is “Knowledge alters fate”

There were lots of slogans to encourage study in the past. 

“There are houses of gold in the books; there are pretty girls like jade in the books.”

“Study to secure a position in the Government” or, “Study to become an Officer”

And these slogans did have a huge effect on young people when they are forced to study the books they didn’t like much. 

And now the new slogan is everywhere.

The point is not whether knowledge alters fate or not. Though people may or may not aware what is fate and what is knowledge. The point is when the girls did secure places in the universities, they were told not to come back to the poor villages. 

What is the purpose of knowledges, then? Is it for selfish interest only?

And, who is the one to push the slogan into the media and everywhere? Where does it come from? 

It is a must to know what is knowledge and what is the purpose of knowledge and then, you will not be weaken by such slogans. 

There was a highly respected school in Hong Kong since the colony days with the name: “School for the Children of Laborers”. Now the school changed its name into something else. It seems they don’t think they are working for children of laborers anymore. The new name is “School to Create Knowledge”

Can knowledge be created?

I have a good time when I visit a small café in the Sports field. It is an outdoor café with birds coming often. I would throw some bits of bread for them. They would wait patiently for the bits. I would joke with them to throw small bits of paper instead. They pecked on the paper bits and never eat them. All of them knew what is bread and what is paper. They knew that breads are eatable and papers not. 

We can turn a complicated issue into a simple one here. Why do they know that is paper and never allow papers to be swallowed? Is the knowledge built-in before they were born? Or the smell of the paper seems different? 

We have two issues here. 

One:  papers are not for eating. It is the rule of the nature. 

Second:  birds do have a device in their bodies. The device might be something like a measuring tool for them. They could check things out with the measurement. We humans have the measuring tools too. We would not be happy with some kinds of smell and will never allow them to enter our nose and mouth. There were discussions in the past that if the measurement tools were given by the creator or acquired by human beings themselves. And this is important though it is not easy to make a firm judgement.  

What is a knowledge then? 

There are two angles about knowledge. One is the nature side, there is a rule for everything. Two is that you will know the rules with some effort. 

And the more important part is in the Third:  That we can learn something not only by oneself but by the whole team of human beings in a long history since we were in the planet. And knowledges did not exist in our single body only but in a huge network stretching from ancient times till now.  

Knowledge is a network and we can learn it in a cooperative way. 

What will happen if we know more and more until one day, we can be sure that we cannot knew it all but still we are learning and would never stop?

That is because, we have another device in our bodies: we will be rewarded with a  happy feeling to know. With this feeling, we are building our confidence day by day by questing. 

We would be more able and can dedicate more. That meant we are freer. 

That is a strange concept. You are free already and you want more free? 

Yes, that is why we all have a special interest to know the ultimate secret of the nature and would be willing to dedicate more about that. 

And all of us will remember the Chinese ancestor Kua Fu who died running after the Sun wishing to know where is the Sun going. He left a stick on the ground and it had become a big forest since then. 

There must be a pleasure bigger than everything even dying could not stop him and the pleasure or, a strong yet strange determination within him supported him to do that.  

What is knowledge and what is the purpose of knowledge?

You will know it sooner or later.

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Recent Books by Lee Chard in printable form of pdf files. Read in mobile or print-out. US$12 each.  You will never find them in the Book shops and you may wonder why.

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• 1  莊子宇宙 

• 2  明天誰會富起來(中國精神與世界大勢)

• 3  莊子寓言

• 4  李察寓言

• 5  Fables by Lee Chard

• 6  莊子兵法(Zhuang Zi Art of War)(bi-lingual)

• 7  真假莊子(莊子著作李察全譯本)