Man has always been characterized as a curious creature, desiring to learn and expand his knowledge base. In the past men have defied everything in nature and in their souls to just find the answer to their most vexing questions. Ecclesiastes correctly proclaims that the wisdom and knowledge man lusts after leads to sadness and mourning. Knowledge has been repeatedly abused and has caused a countless amount of deaths and a plethora of reasons to lament. Throughout history and literature, wisdom that has been sought inevitably leads to grief.
Since the beginning of man in the book of Genesis, men have hungered for the fruits of knowledge which have eventually led to death and destruction. In the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve partook of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge because they wanted the power and wisdom that God possessed. As a result, Adam and Eve caused the Fall of Man and God punished them with the existence of death, pain of childbirth, and hardships of labor. The Bible’s motif of sorrowful knowledge is present throughout the book of Ecclesiastes which states that everything is meaningless and a mere “chasing of the wind.
Ecclesiastes states that “better is the man who has never been, who has never seen the evil done under the sun,” meaning that it is better to never have been born than to possess knowledge which leads to grief and regret. Oedipus clearly supports the notion that knowledge leads to pain, suffering, and grief. In Sophocles’ novel, Oedipus, Oedipus is a powerful and happy king who is destroyed by the knowledge that he has killed his father and married his mother. Before knowing that he was a pariah, Oedipus was healthy and content and would have remained so if he had never known the Truth.
The knowledge of his actionsnot the actions alonedestroyed Oedipus, causing him to gash-out his eyes and live in exile. History has proven that knowledge is the cause of much pain and suffering. Different inventions, all hailed as a giant leap for mankind, have lead to the deaths of billions of innocent and sensitive humans. When Nobel invented dynamite, he was proud to have found a way to aid in the construction and destruction of buildings and bridges; however, human nature had its way with knowledge.
Dynamite became the vital ingredient in bombs and other devices used to quickly slaughter humans. Bombs have killed a countless number of people and have lead many people to mourn for the loss of their loved ones, houses, cars, and peace of mind. Despite the benefits of dynamite in construction, it has produced grief in its victims and their families and friends. For thousands of years, humans have sought the knowledge of the structure and essence of the atom.
In 400 B. C. en the Greek philosopher Democritus suggested that the world consisted of atoms, he probably did not portend that scientists in the Twentieth-Century would use those same atoms to murder thousands of innocent civilians. Though knowledge of the atom has been used to produce energy, its past is much darker and more fatal. During World War II, American scientists worked unremittingly on the Manhattan Project, a fateful plot to devise a bomb that uses the splitting of a single atom to slaughter humans.
The scheme was finally finished and America dropped the catastrophic atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing thousands of Japanese humans within seconds. Is the knowledge of the atom really worth the masses of innocent victims? The tragedy of the atomic bomb did not stop after the world watched the suffering Japanese civilians slowly die. The dropping of the atomic bomb was the first event in the Cold War between the United States and Russia. Russia built an atomic bomb to preserve its place as equal with the United States.
As a result, Americans became fearful of an atomic attack on the United States. Many Americans stayed awake at night, worrying that the Soviets would bomb them. The atomic bomb has lived up to its reputation as a vicious massacring device whose discovery has caused many deaths and much sorrow. Following the desires of human nature, people have sacrificed their time, money, happiness, and lives to seek-out knowledge and wisdom. Despite knowledge’s consistent outcome of sorrow, suffering and grief, humans will still crave the unknown, seeking its bittersweet wisdom.