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Ignorance Hell

In the introduction to The Upanishads, Swami Paramananda says: 

Upanishad shows that the only hell is absence of knowledge. As long as man is overpowered by the darkness of ignorance, he is the slave of Nature and must accept whatever comes as the fruit of his thoughts and deeds. When he strays into the path of unreality, the Sages declare that he destroys himself;

There is this Alvin Toffler quote about the need to learn and relearn to not descend into illiteracy in the 21st century

“The illiterate of the 21st century,” Toffler wrote, “will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”

Thinking about the hell begotten by the absence of knowledge and the need to unlearn and relearn to stay even passingly relevant these days, got me feeling concerned about how I would fare in the next decade and more. The learning muscle will grow increasingly weaker even the number of brand new things to learn will increase rapidly.

 The foundational gaps in  core disciplines will hurt more than ever and the brain will refuse to be supple and learn as fast as it once could. It brought to mind scenes from my high school and college years when I was completely checked out of the learning process and focused on doing the least amount of work to get to the finish line - freedom to live the life I wanted to, with no interference or input from others. I did achieve that goal early and looking back can't help wondering if that freedom was worth anything at all.
 
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