"The Wonder of Not Knowing"

This article is taken from an edition of the Straits Times, but it is actually from the New York Times. It is basically about the essence of not knowing and its many benefits.

If you really think about it, like how this writer obviously has, there are a lot of advantages of disadvantages of not knowing things.

I agree that life must have been much more exciting in the past. This is because people, especially children, asked a lot of question about a large variety of things. Therefore, because of the lack of technology, they had to find out the things themselves. Life would have been more exciting because of the thrill of looking for the answers by oneself, and the satisfaction and pride that one had found out something and widened his pool of knowledge using his own means. Nowadays, although it is certainly much easier to find out things which we want to know, for the information is just one mouse click away, it takes away all the excitement which existed in the so-called "good old days". The curiosity only lasts a while because it can only last for the time which we take to boot up the old laptop.

I personally like to read about the unexplainable, or related topics, like mystery stories. This is because knowing that no one can find out the answer makes the whole issue extremely mysterious and exciting. Knowing that there is actually an answer, as the writer says, takes away the mysteriousness of the whole issue and leaves me quite disappointed. I can truly testify to this, and so can anyone else. This can be accomplished simply by picking up a mystery book. While still thick in the plot, one feels excited and curious about why this and that happened, and how it is going to solved. However, when one reaches the end of the book, where the mystery is solved, one feels a twinge of disappointment because alas, there is an explanation for all the things which happened in the crime, in the mystery. The next time one reads the book, all that excitement is gone, because one already knows what happens. The suspense no longer exists. This may also be the reason why people like to watch horror flicks. Because there is suspense. There is the crawling on one's skin and the cold clammy hand over one's heart. That is exciting.

However, there is still a downside for not knowing, which is quite obvious. The reason is that one will not be able to enhance one's knowledge and know how the world works. Man has long looked for answers to how things work, and since different people have different ideas, Google appeared. This search engine provides comprehensive answers to almost any question one can think of, and not from only a few but instead a seemingly endless list of sources. This is so that people can search for answers as easy as 1,2,3 and satisfy their thirst for knowledge.