The More We Learn The Sadder We Get

It is simply a fact of human nature that the older we get, the more we learn, as every added second that you are alive you take in more information. This means that our knowledge is at its least point when we are born and at its peak the moment before we die (provided that person has been lucky enough to avoid the many diseases that cripple one’s mind). This means that as we grow, we learn, and I would argue that we learn at an exponential rate. This is why I would argue that the phrase, the more we learn the sadder we get, is interchangeable with the phrase, the older we get the sadder we get. We enjoy the benefits of blissful ignorance in our youth, however as we grow we learn what a depressing place the world truly is, but maybe it isn’t all bad.

So let us start with the world as we see it in the blissful ignorance of our youth. Our parents are superheroes that can make any problem go away, cartoons are our best friend and we do not have a care in the world about much else. The only worries we have are whether we will be allowed to play outside with our friends and watch TV when we want to. These are probably the only years of our lives when we aren’t kept awake at night by the problems of the real world.

You see, as we reach our teenage years the cruel world that we live in starts to introduce itself to us. You realise that your parents don’t have the solution to each and every problem and that they have problems of their own. We learn about society at large and start to see some of our family as the evil, vindictive people that they actually are (if you don’t then it’s probably you). Put simply, we learn that most humans simply aren’t that great, including ourselves. We see humans for the flawed people they are and realise maybe I’m on my own here.

Between your teens and adulthood, you may become more socially aware and active because at this point you are familiar with the brutal nature of the world you live in, the pollution in the air you breathe, the lead in the tap water you drink and the capitalist ideals by which you must live your life. However, at this age you are also naïve enough to believe that you can make a difference. You may be emboldened to go out and try to make a change for the better only to learn the harsh lesson that the world is happily stuck in its ways, though this is a more self-destructive type of ignorance than the type experienced by a young child.

Then adulthood hits you and there is nothing that can prepare you for it. However, by now you know not to expect much from the world and from people. You’ve resigned yourself to a mundane life, no longer the idealist you may have once been.

Now that we’ve looked at how the older we get the sadder we get, we can look at some specific examples where learning more leads to sadness. You’d be hard pressed to find a field of study where gaining extensive knowledge won’t simply point you to the conclusion that we are all doomed anyway. Science will tell you that even if we somehow survive global warming, the Earth will be consumed by the sun anyway, so why not tell that person you like them since you’re both going to end up being fuel for a dying star anyway.

Whatever issue we may study, whether it be war, famine, genocide or a global pandemic, we simply realise that as a race we have become completely morally bankrupt and it will take a lot more than the suffering of fellow human beings to bring us to act. Something like the banking sector collapsing. Now that’s a real issue.

Now it wouldn’t be fair to you as the reader to not offer you a small crumb of hope to cling onto, otherwise what would be the point of continuing to live in this almost dystopian world. There are a few good people in this world or at least there used to be and their ideals and beliefs live on. People who worked for the betterment of others with nothing to gain. People such as Edhi, Mother Teresa, Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela. Maybe we don’t all need to be self-serving egomaniacs.

In conclusion, as we learn more throughout our lives we fall further and further down the pit of despair, doomed to never come back up. Similarly, whatever subject we may take an interest in we only learn that our efforts are futile and that no one really cares about changing much and that things will stay the way they are because people like them that way because they are comfortable and the suffering of another human thousands of miles away is not enough to change that. The world is terrible, humans are disappointments and if we’re lucky a nuclear war will put us out of our misery earlier than we deserve. At least we have that small crumb of hope, at least we have that.