My family and I went to eat at a nice Japanese / Chinese restaurant yesterday. The fortune in my fortune cookie read as follows: “only the educated are free.”
Nobody knows who writes these “fortunes.” When they are right, we praise them. When they are wrong, we don’t pay them any mind. Usually. This time was different. I don’t agree with this fortune.
This short statement says a few thing about human nature. The first is that you should “be educated,” whatever that means. The next is that those who aren’t educated are not free. What the author means by education is unknown.
Here’s why I don’t agree. An uneducated person can learn to sit with himself, calm his mind, and meditate on the many observable, sensible mysteries of the world. Through this approach he can free himself from the rat races of the world—he can became free of the trappings of his own mind.
And tell me, who is truly free: an educated man who has learned all there is to learn or an uneducated man who is ready to learn anything?