Knowledge Supposedly the Best Investment

December 13, 2017

Read, read, read, read!  You are told it is good for you, but, much like eating vegetables, no one wants to do it.  School children loath their primers, adults say they do not have the time, and senior citizens explain it puts them to sleep.  Reading, however, is the single best investment an individual can make.  This is not new, but the Observer treats reading like some epiphany in the article, “If You’re Not Spending Five Hours Per Week Learning, You’re Being Irresponsible.”

The article opens with snippets about famous smart people and how they take the time to read at least an hour a day.  The stories are followed by these wise words:

The answer is simple: Learning is the single best investment of our time that we can make. Or as Benjamin Franklin said, ‘An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.’  This insight is fundamental to succeeding in our knowledge economy, yet few people realize it. Luckily, once you do understand the value of knowledge, it’s simple to get more of it. Just dedicate yourself to constant learning.

The standard excuse follows that in today’s modern world we are too busy making money in order to survive to learn new things, then we are slugged with the dire downer that demonetization is making previously expensive technology cheaper or even free.  Examples are provided such as video conferencing, video game consoles, cameras, encyclopedias, and anything digital.  All of these are found on a smartphone.

Technology that was once gold is now cheap, making knowledge more valuable.  Then we are told that technology will make certain jobs obsolete and the only way to survive in the future will be to gain more knowledge and apply, because this can never be taken from you. The bottom line is to read, learn, apply knowledge, and then make that a daily ritual.  The message is not anything new, but does learning via filtered and censored online search results count?

Whitney Grace, December 13, 2017

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