I’m a knowledge hunter. I like(read looooove)knowing stuff. I hunt everywhere for a life worth living and a knowledge worth knowing. Having grown up with an acute nature-nurture feeling of having roots nowhere most of my(let’s settle for adult life for now), I have felt a kindredness with knowledge, a feeling that I have always had everywhere to go. And even though I love the pursuit of knowledge. I don’t like labels. Me? A bookworm? Knowledge junkie? I prefer "literary goddess with an insatiable thirst for knowledge; traveling time and space inhibiting the minds of heroes and villains throughout the ages." EXTRA. I am an Aquarius too. It is my birth right. Just like Leos and their courage and Capricorns with their usefulness to themselves. With knowledge in gratitude comes kindness from knowledge.
Now the conflict; the real conflict in the world; is not between good and evil really(it never was); but between knowledge and ignorance. Two sides of the same awareness coin. Mutually exclusive but forever intertwined. And that’s the thing with knowledge…the flux state of knowing and not knowing, is like the state of ease and disease. Like in the movie Superman, where Lex Luthor puts it beautifully:
Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it’s a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients in the back of a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.
Love me an intellectual protagonist. Always. They teach you so much no?
So what really is knowledge?
Etymologically, it comes from the Old English cnāwan; to know, to perceive, to recognize. In Kamba(my native language), "know" can be translated as "ũmanyĩ" or "ũmanya". The verb "to know" is "kũmanyĩĩa.
It is in many an important historical documents; etched into declarations and doctrines that dared to define freedom, power, and humanity itself. From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where knowledge is framed as a birthright, to UNESCO's Constitution which warns that peace must be built in the minds of men. Knowledge is not just referenced, it's revered. It has been legislated, restricted, weaponized, and worshipped. And whether in the Freedom Charter’s call to fling open the “doors of learning,” or Agenda 2063’s vision of Africa as a knowledge capital, one thing is clear: the story of knowledge is also the story of who gets to write history/herstory…and who is written out of it. And even more so in this era of AI-generated everything, TikTok degrees(I promise I love the tokotoko app and all the genzials I’m discovering there), and curated realities, we have to interrogate anew; what does it mean to know…truly know something? And what don’t we know we know? And what do we think we know but don’t?
Knowledge. What a Kaleidoscope. I can’t even cover the full breadthe of it. This is like an appetizer-esque discourse on knowledge(by my standards if I may add).
This Sun-Day See Best Day, Dear Gentle Reader somewhere(thanks for 1,500 subscribers BTW!!!), let us end and start a new week with a mindset that is awash with common sense and a lot of demurring. Let’s make sense of the nonsensical, synthesize the scattered, and remember that:
The hallmark of expertise is no longer how much you know. It’s how well you synthesize. The future belongs to those who connect dots.
Knowledge as Memory: Personal, Collective, and Ancestral
Knowledge as Memory is the brain and soul’s scrapbook. Where stories live in our cells, ancestors whisper through lullabies, and even what we forget still remembers us.
The Mind Never Forgets What the Heart Has Lived.
And Memory is a stubborn archivist. Quite. It stores more than dates and data. It also quite selfishly hoards meaning, even when we try(or not) to forget. Oral traditions hum in grandmother’s songs. Epigenetic trauma hides in our bones. It’s worthy to note what Nwando Achebe, award winning Professor of History at Michigan State University quotes in the introduction to female mornachs and merchant queens in Africa on rethinking historiography;
Until lions have their own historians, the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
African memory, often dismissed, is a source of embodied genius, storytelling, resilience. We must look back to move forward. Because when you know your roots, no storm can shake your branches.
Knowledge as Power: Who Has It, Who Decides It, Who Controls It
The Pen Is Mightier Than the Algorithm.
Is it? Especially now? The last frontier still?
Knowledge has always had gatekeepers: colonizers, clerics, and now, code. Wikipedia has long been the new battleground of bias. And that’s just regular search. Don’t get me started on the evolution of ‘thoughtful’ search with the emergence of GenAI. AI is remixing colonial logic at scale. It is what it is. A spade. Not a big spoon. What gets censored, indexed, or monetized decides what counts as “truth.” It always does. Max that out with hyperinflation of economies of scale that is making things for the sake of making them. Phew!
The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed ~ Steve Biko, South African anti-apartheid activist
Welcome to the Age of Digital Colonialism, where datasets decide destinies. Who owns the narrative owns the business, nation, continent, people, everything. And if you think any currently existing ‘technocractic feudalist cloud capital harvest system’ is neutral, try searching “Africa” and check what shows up. Better yet, ask ChatGPT to highlight for you countries of your choosing in Africa on a map. Don't forget to be gobsmacked.
Knowledge as Embodiment: Beyond the Brain
You Don’t Just Know It, You Become It.
Western education may tell you that knowledge lives in libraries. But let’s not forget: A dancer's memory lives in her limbs. A mother’s knowing emerges between breaths and birth. The body is not a brain taxi. Its meant to be a library of lived knowing.
Muscle memory, intuition, indigeneity…this is knowledge not to be read, but to be remembered. Even grief teaches. Even silence speaks. Even lineage loves lessons forward into liberated legacies.
Some Ancestral Mathematics for you. In order to be born, you needed:
2 parents
4 grandparents
8 great-grandparents
16 second great-grandparents
32 third great-grandparents
64 fourth great-grandparents
128 fifth great-grandparents
256 sixth great-grandparents
512 seventh great-grandparents
1,024 eighth great-grandparents
2,048 ninth great-grandparents
For you to be born today from 12 previous generations, you needed a total of 4.094 ancestors over the last 400. That melanin(matriarchy) runs deep. The knowledge of Africa is kinetic.
Did you know;The Sankofa Symbol is one of the expressions of the Akan people's strong belief that the past serves as a true guide for the future. Therefore, a great deal of importance is placed on gleaning wisdom from the past in order to navigate the future and pass down wisdom and indigenous knowledge for generations to come. It is who we are to remember.
Knowledge as Disruption: Unknowing, Unlearning, Undoing
Knowledge as Disruption is the art of sacred subtraction where wisdom whispers not in what we cling to, but in what we’re brave enough to unlearn. Let go. Let them.
In pursuit of ‘I know better now’: Add Subtraction to Your Curriculum.
Sometimes, knowing means unknowing. The best teachers make you question the textbook. The sharpest minds sit comfortably in beginner’s mind. We must break echo chambers, unlearn patriarchy, and decolonize not just curricula, but consciousness.
Think of knowledge in this way then as compost: decay makes fertile ground. True mastery isn’t having all the answers. It’s knowing which questions still matter.
To know your mother tongue is to hold the key to your ancestors’ memory. Each word a breadcrumb back to who you were before the world renamed you.
This is how I see the knowledge of African languages and especially their very acute absence in many notable knowledge apps for language learning eg the more famous Duolingo. Ngugi Wa Thiong'o once said in an interview that "modernity is rooted in African enslavement". You could stop at the enslavement of abantu, the arbitrary way of looking at slavery. But slavery is a serpent that is so much bigger. So much more insidious. By hindering the linguistic development of indigenous people, local languages are rinsed out of our mouths. Yet, that is the part of the body that holds the knowledge of the world that we inhabit. This arrested development continually chokes our relationship with the natural world; we lose the original meanings of local names, and therefore we lose the knowledge of what those names give us. Our traditional way of nomenclature never takes away from the beauty or the function of the landmark.
Knowledge as Fabric: The Interconnected-ness of All Things
Weaving Worlds with Wisdom.
Everything connects. Fractals in nature mirror algorithms in tech. Ubuntu is not just a concept; it’s code: I am because we are. Systems thinking teaches that knowledge isn't a silo. It’s a symphony.
Quantum everything now echoes African spirituality: what you do here, echoes there. So code-switch if you must. Think in layers. Speak in spirals. The future belongs to pattern seers(seekers)
Every iota of knowledge you gain throughout the seasons of life that helps you grow & get one step closer to Innerstanding yourself, shows you have benefitted from the season. After You know yourself What does that actually mean? To know yourself is to be in- sync with how your Body acts and re-acts to yourself and the world around you. When your "Within matches your Without" when you have mastered the above or the below or both so much that you become the "true master" of self. Once the creator creates the creation, then you have mastered the Knowledge of Self, because it is then that you realize who and what "you" are.
When I came across the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe; it clicked for me. I saw this knowledge avalanche like the Google Maps for consciousness. A cosmic co-authored document, where reality edits itself and I’m both the reader and the writer. The laws of the universe don’t just govern; they know they’re being applied. It’s wild. It means every choice, every memory, every intention isn’t just action. it’s participation. (I’m still not over how this has changed how I live my life). In this yin and yang dance loop, I don’t just absorb knowledge, I activate it. Awareness becomes Abundance.
Knowledge as Commodity: Economies of Knowing
Tuition, Tradition, and the Price of Knowing.
In today’s market, knowledge has become... expensively democratized. Student debt. IP battles. Monetized mindfulness. Very. Available to all. But awareness is not for everyone. It’s personal. Silicon Valley(or your government) wants to sell you “truth” behind a paywall many a times. Even your data is for sale(it always was a productization of humanity strategy all along). A form of digital labor you didn’t clock in for. I wrote extensively about this topic cloud capital in my substack. Have a read when you can(link in bio).
Not only has it become expensively democratized. But controlled. Heavily. Its approach, methodology and execution is very nuanced. Not in a good way here in Kenya and Africa at the moment. I find it disconcerting that we have no continuously improved education system we can leverage on for monitoring and evaluation. Very ridiculous.
But here's the ONLY counter-truth that matters:
ANY literacy…is a survival skill.
True knowledge doesn’t just make you money…it makes you free. And Everyone deserves to be paid for their skills, time and knowledge(read aggregation of knowledge now). Everyone also deserves to go pursue knowledge to the extend of their awakening. It is a personal endeavor. Always.
Knowledge as Emotion: Feeling Your Way into Knowing
Feelings Are Facts, Too.
I used to be afraid of feeling around and finding out. But then I thought about it in the context of knowledge. And now I yearn for it. You have to. You can’t quote Kant and still miss kindness. You can’t ace exams and flunk empathy. The truth? Be it scientific, spiritual, emotional, ancestral, or inconvenient truth…it is all knowledge. On the other side of this curriculum is the kind of knowing that can't be graded but must be felt.
Love is pedagogy. Emotion is epistemology. And the heart? A classroom with no walls.
Precariously Alive.
I grow. I outgrow. I learn. I unlearn I relearn. I am flexible and adaptable. When something feels right, I listen to it. Even if the changes that it will bring are uncomfortable. My heart knows the way.
Art tells truths that footnotes can’t. When you learn to feel, you feel to learn. Emotional intelligence is the unsung syllabus of our lives. It’s freedom in a classless kind of way. And I pray for many to unlock this kind of knowledge. And may you continue disappointing the people that place expectations onto you without your knowledge or consent. may they see the error in their ways from trying to limit you into their narrow world view knowing you’d never play along with this created narrative of who you are. Art-Attack style(is this show still running? Loved it so much as a kid)
Knowledge as Technology: Tools, Mediums, and Transmission
The Medium Is Still the Message.
Books shaped empires. Memes reshape minds. Thoth, the Egyptian god of knowledge, created himself through language. Now, GPTs are teaching your child calculus.
But remember: tech doesn’t just carry knowledge now. It mutates it. Self-supervised machine learning is the mouthful. In the image of its creator. Bringing to the forefront; some classical introspection.
What’s lost in translation?
What’s gained in transmission?
Who’s the biggest loser and gainer?
Naval Ravikant(his almanack is chef’s kiss!)reminds us, true wealth(capital, labour, code, media) isn’t just accumulated; it’s architected through specific knowledge, accountability, and long-term thinking. In a world where knowledge is currency, the real capital lies not in what you memorize but in what you uniquely know and can leverage. Build or buy equity in what you believe, and remember: wealth follows wisdom when the knowledge is both rare and real.
Start small. Share your niche brilliance. Become a knowledge engineer; one of the new jobs Paul Graham predicted will now exist in the age of AI. Because the world needs your version of wisdom. Creativity knowledge wins in the future.
PS: A knowledge engineer is a professional who designs, builds, and maintains systems that capture, organize, and apply knowledge; especially within artificial intelligence (AI) and expert systems.
Knowledge as Myth: Stories We Tell to Make Sense of Chaos
Simply put. Stories Are the Syntax of the Soul.
Proof of humanity’s ingenuity anyone?
We ALL know the famous twin-flame trees in the Biblical creation story of Life and Knowledge of Good and Evil(remember what I said about the real battle when we started…this statement exemplifies the upside down-ness of the world we live in).
All cultures tell stories to explain the unexplainable. Some call them myths. Others call them science. But whether it’s Nammu birthing the earth, sky and gods, or Newton birthing gravity, the core is the same: We tell stories to map the chaos.
In Africa, our stories got colonized. Our myths were demoted. But reclaiming myth is reclaiming meaning. And as Dr. Estés reminds us in her brilliant book Women who run with the wolves: “The gift of story is the gift of love.”
So myth wisely, Dear Gentle Reader.
Especially about yourself. Khalil Gibran had this to say about Self Knowledge in the Prophet: “Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights. But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge. You would know in words that which you have always known in thought. You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams. And it is well you should. The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea; And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.”
To know yourself is to be in sync with your reactions and your realities. It’s to decode your DNA of dreams. Knowledge isn’t static. A vibration. A velocity.
We’re living in a season of distortion. Fake news floods our feeds. AI deepfakes our memories now. Truth is really stranger than fiction. But clarity isn’t the absence of confusion. It is the commitment to coherence. Water the banks of the curren(t)cy of knowledge.
Especially by finding and building a specific kind of knowledge. For the individual. On the collective…A central knowledge, policy and process repository.
All urge is blind save when there is knowledge. And all knowledge is vain save when there is work, And all work is empty save when there is love; And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.
Curiosity.
Knowledge.
Skills.
Results.
Refinement.
"Ignorance" has 9 letters. But so does "Knowledge". You have two realities to choose from. It’s up to you to decide which one you want to live.
Information abundance requires pattern recognition. Again; It's not enough to collect facts. The future belongs to those who connect dots. I have long felt that Education is the seed, children are the soil, and reading is the rain; and together, they cultivate a legacy of generational excellence rooted in knowledge that grows minds, families, and futures. It has become abundantly clear to me that the first nations that adopts a comprehensive financial education program for all students, rich or poor, will emerge as a financial world power in Africa and beyond.
If you're lost, the answer is education.
If you're educated, the answer is execution.
If you're executing, the answer is persistence.
If you're persisting, the answer is experimentation.
Don’t let your knowledge fade away.
So Be a compounder. Surround yourself with compounders; those who multiply awakening wisdom, wealth, and wonder. Be the alchemist of your own narrative. Use your knowing to build bridges between Ubuntu and algorithms, capital and community, spirit and system.
Because knowledge isn’t just the key. It’s the kingdom. Linkin Park said it best in their song from The Hunting Party Album. Better yet. What Tiwa and Mr. Eaze said.
Think you’ll be happy.
Have a lovely Sunday ✨🦋
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