KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

There is an old saying, that has been around for as long as man remembers – knowledge is power. I have lived by this rule my whole life. At school I took in everything I could, like an information sponge. I crammed before tests. As I got older I carried on studying. I picked up hobbies. I revelled in research. Anything that I felt like it would be important or useful for me to know? I knew it.

It became an obsession. I learned languages I would never need just to have them in my arsenal. I tucked information away in my brain about parts of cars that I’d never own just because my father had the manuals lying around. And I know my policies and those of my opposition inside and out, at all times. It’s why I’m good at public speaking. You’ll notice I rarely work from notes, I often refuse a teleprompter. I take things in, and I know things.

There is another man in the OSW that shares this burden.

Cryptkeeper.

He knows the story that is incoming. Like me, knowledge helps him get ahead, but whereas I have used it to train my mind into becoming a powerful weapon in advancing through the political world, Cryptkeeper uses it to literally get ahead. He uses his knowledge to understand what lies before him and before all of us.

I often feel like to know the future for everyone here, and everyone around the world, must be the heaviest of burdens. Yet this is true for us all. Knowledge is indeed power, but sometimes that power is not worth holding. I’ll take a famous quote here: with power comes great responsibility. By extension, if knowledge is power, then with knowledge comes great responsibility. Of course some knowledge does not. Some knowledge is a cheap parlour trick – knowing the intro to songs from the 80s, or being able to name an episode of your favourite TV show from a five word quote, for example. But some knowledge holds more currency than other knowledge, and for that higher knowledge, the responsibility is something you can never understand until you feel it for yourself.

Like I said: I know things. Things no human being would ever want to know. I’ve struggled with that responsibility before, but now I own it. It’s part of me. All I can do is put that knowledge – that power – into something good for this world. That is my responsibility. But Cryptkeeper? His problem is he has all the power in the world, but he has no idea how to use it. The responsibility is far too much for him, and sooner or later he will crumble. He’ll see something in that tome of his that will blow his ancient mind, and stop him functioning.

But the world doesn’t stop turning, and its our responsibility, Crypt, to keep going despite everything we come to know. If you can’t do that? You may as well know nothing.

Vote Whitlock.