For a larger version, simply click on the comic strip above.Questions & issues to consider:
A) In the third frame, Catbert says, "Stress is just another word for knowledge." What does this comment imply about knowledge (e.g. its nature, its basis, its consequences, etc.)? Do you agree or disagree? Why?
B) In the fourth frame, Catbert asks the quintessential TOK question, "How do I know that?" about his (her?) statement from the third frame. But are there any frames in the strip that the question would not apply to? What does this say about the nature of knowledge, or knowing?
C) What do you make of the mantra that Catbert recites in the next to last frame of the strip? What do you conclude is the artist's message here? Do you agree or disagree? Why?
16 comments:
I think that the comment "stress is just another word for knowledge" implies that knowledge has negative consequences on the knower, and causes agitation and stress. I don't agree with this statement, because I find that sometimes I feel I know more when I'm not stressed, like when I'm painting just for fun. Even though I'm using my knowledge of the skill, I do not feel stressed during that time period.
The dilbert comic brings about the clear fact that you must know something to know something. Much like the saying that you gotta have money to make money. In our lives, even as infants we begin to gain knowledge through our experiences. If we burn ourself on the stove we most likely will avoid touching it next tie it is on. In the comic he wonders how he knows something. He knows it becaue he has learned the word from somewhere and he knows he learned it because he has stated it. In order to gain knowledge about certain things we must first acquirre some minimal knowledge to truly understand something. In order to know a word you must know the meaning and to know the meaning you either have to acquire it from reading or having someone tell you that. From both of those sources you must have prior knowledge of either how to read or understand a certain language. Thus knowledge builds on itself, the more you know the more you understand.
"Stress is just another word for knowledge." I think what he meant was that in knowing things you will eventually come across obsticles. So with the gift of knowledge, we also carry a baggage of facing reality that causes human beings stress.
When Catberg states that stress is another word for knowledge, he implies that the worry and the burden we carry from stress is the same one we carry from knowledge. Knowledge is a tool, and by no means a burden so I completely disagree with the idea that stress is another word for knowledge. But the one thing that I do agree is that knowledge does sometimes cause us to hurt and understand certain aspects of life that may cause us to be stress and feel burdened. But if we choose to ignore the knowledge we reject our high status to reason in among the animal kingdom, and reside in the primitive part of the food chain. Though it may be true that without knowledge life will be stress free, it is also true that it will lose a lot of its meaning, and you will become like a raft drifting wherever the river takes you. As for what Catberg says in the fourth frame, knowledge is unstoppable, even if you don’t want it you will receive it. As for what he recites in the seventh frame, it proves that point exactly. Even though he didn’t think about it Catburg recites dumb blondes, to clear his mind and become them.
A)Knowledge brings with it some responsibility, which relates to stress because lots of responsibilities are usually the cause of stress. I agree, when you are knowledgable about a certain topic it is your responsibility to share that knowledge. By sharing the knowledge you can justify it and help other people to discover the truth, or you realize that your knowledge is false and you discover the truth.
I think the major theme of this comic strip is having our mind see what we want it to. This was a major issue that we talked about before we went on winter break and I think it is seen here. The cat talks about emptying his mind and then at the end doesn't represent dogbert. He does't recognize him beacuse he is stressed out and his brain is choosing to not recognize him. This was something that I noticed I was starting to do mildly over the break. I went to a subway where they had a glass cover that could either cover the food or slide up about 3 feet and allow the employee to grab the food and not allow you to touch it. At first I didn't relaize the glass was flat and I thought it was lifted up. But I eventually realized that my brain was deciving me and I was seeing what I wanted to. I feel that this example is similar to the cartoon and gives an example of how we can make our brain believe what it wants to.
Without any stress one can never obtain any knowledge, it requires the active pursuit of it. Once we get to some form of knowledge, however, it may often raise further questions. So rather than ever relaxing with the attainment of knowledge, more than likely it will lead to the discovery of more sources of confusion. Of course I agree with this. However, we cannot simply block out our minds to knowledge like Catbert believes himself to have done. To speak, to think, to do anything functional at all requires knowledge. Even by saying that his mind is empty, Catbert makes a claim to knowledge of it being empty. When he realizes this, he immediately begins to shut down in confusion and once again makes an attempt to discard all knowledge. By the final frame he cannot even function because of his lack of knowledge.
The point the artist makes in the last frame is that celebrity gossip corrodes our minds. It destroys any useful thinking and questioning such as "How do I know that?" Sure I agree with that as well. Spending time following the lives of celebrities, who in reality are complete strangers that you'll probably never meet, isn't going to advance you or society.
I think that in the third slide when they say that stress is refered to knowledge, I agree, because of what he had probably meant to say about the knowledge issues and its conflicts. The more knowledge a person knows the more they are aware of other knowledge that may be opposing or disagreeing with a previous knowledge. This can creat insecurity to decide what the "right" knowledge is. This is a knowledge conflict and can cause stress, a lot like in the movie Crimson Tide where there was a lot of stress because of the knowledge conflict there with the captain and co-captain.
I wonder why this site keeps saying no one has posted anything yet. Every time I check there are zero comments. What happened to my last two posts? :(
Anyway, I'll get to the question. Catbert is not actually in this comic, only Dogbert and some mouse. Tangent! Sorry, back on topic, there is quite a bit of truth to the mouse's statement that "stress is another word for knowledge." Life is so much simpler to just not know anything and merely exist instead of live. But that is impossible because there is no way to have no knowledge. Every moment of your life is spent gathering observations and making conclusions about said observations. If it was possible to eliminate all of your stress by removing your knowledge, I have a feeling that a lot of people in this country would gladly placate themselves in the world of ignorance. Spending all their time reflecting on celebrities and music instead of contemplating solutions to the world's problems. You know who I'm talking about...
Knowledge usually does bring stress. This kind of relates to the saying that ignorance is bliss. The less you know the happier you are and Catbert demonstrates that this is true for him. In most cases, I do agree with these statements. I think this is why little kids are so much happier than adults.
The mantra is hilarious. The artist is making a point that these famous women don't always think things through. They don't know how their actions effect themselves and others. None of them seem real bright yet they still party and have a good time.
This comic strip made me laugh because I can truly say that I've probably said that sometime in these past two year. Im sure many of the full IB students and even partial IB students have said that knowledge which we sometimes relate to school is stressful. But I think its not the fact that knowledge is stressful but the actual process of knowledge or analyzing knowledge is whats is stressful. We make it stressful on ourselves. We question every piece of evidence and don't just accept its as truth which ends up being stress and sometimes misunderstanding.
This comic strip reminded me of the saying "ignorance is bliss" and i agree with Catbert. Before i took TOK i was very submissive to what people claimed they knew, or when they claimed something was so just because it was on the news. The more you look into the requirements for knowledge the more you become skeptical about things that you may have accepted as reality and as soon as you discredit one idea it has a domino affect and others will be discredited just like when Descartes was sorting through all his beliefs. Someone who has not been exposed to the rules of the intellectual world lives a life of bliss accepting what they choose.
The main issue I see in this cartoon is the whole concept that knowledge issues are difficult to deal with. Most of the time it is easier not to think about the knowledge issues that lay underneath our everyday lives, and it is necessary to make generalizations rather than specifications. As illustrated by dogbert's friend,the process of obtaining and maintaining knowledge is often a stressful process. As a corallary, an empty mind is said to be great in this cartoon. From these two declarations, the two characters soon find out that it is impossible to know absolutely nothing, another issue that we have talked about in ToK. As much as knowledge issues can be a pain, knowledge itself is necessary for everyday function. In order to function one needs some knowledge,so to make the huge generalization that "knowledge is bad" or an "empty mind is good" or "knowledge brings only stress" one is denying the inevitability of knowledge. As much as some uneducated people (or poorly educated) say they wish that knowledge was not in existance, this cartoon illustrates the point that atleast a primary level of knowledge is imperative for basic function, (so to take that a step further one could say that high levels of knowledge are imperative for high levels of function).
In the beginning of the comic, i think the author is almost trying to say ignorance is bliss, catbert even describes how stress free he is because he doesn't know anything. When he starts to analyze how he "knows" that stress is another word for knowledge thats when he starts thinking and knowing, and it is too much of a burden upon him. The "mantra" he uses is merely saying the names of people that society feels are stupid and ignorant.
I think that instead of knowledge being stress, i feel that knowledge is a burden upon people. For example pain, suffering, fear, all bad things in the world come from knowing the good things. To know what happiness is, you have to know what sadness is, to know what it is to be pain free, you have to experience pain. A person can only what is good for them, only after experiencing the bad things, otherwise they wouldn't know what was good or bad. So with knowledge a person is burden constantly, with ignorance a person is no longer burden by the same things, they still experience pain, sadness, happiness, but it affects them in a much different way that doesn't provide any sort of knowledge to them at all.
I would like to talk about the responsibilities of those who posess knowledge. in the third "frame," it is mentioned how Knowledge is stress. Although I do not personally have this view, I can see how in many conditions this could be the case. In general, it is not always easy to accept the truth. Sometimes the truth is harder to believe in than the consensus gentium. For example, if I was to say that there was no afterlife, that would be hard for most people to accept. The same can be true in modern society with everyday life. In general, accepting knowledge can sometimes be harder than believing in a lie, and because of that, it is often times more difficult to deal with truth and knowledge than it is to just "sugar-coat" the truth and believe in a lie. That is why often times knowledge and stress are synonimous.
First of all I would like to point out in saying that it is Dogbert and Ratbert, not Dogbert and Catbert in the picture. Catbert is red, not orange. Some of the things that Ratbert does are very annoying such as when he sits down and does mantra.
Now for the real analysis of the comic. Ratbert talks about stress being another word for knowledge. This could mean that it is stressful to know much about anything or that it is stressful to try and attain knowledge. I believe that it is stressful to try and retain your knowledge; trying not to forget what you know is difficult, you must memorize and repeat your memorization until it is embedded in your mind.
What Ratbert does next is try to get rid of this idea of knowledge, either because he doesn’t want to have knowledge about anything or he does not want to be stressed. He does this by saying Lindsay Lohan, Brittany Spears, and Paris Hilton. It is interesting on why he (and yes Ratbert is a he, as has been intended to be so and was stated by Scott Adams, the creator) used these three people, because these celebrities have been in the news a lot lately for making not so smart decisions. From how the news is portraying these people it is making them look stupid, like they have no common sense or knowledge at all. But wait, if they have no knowledge, does that mean they are not stressed out, wow that’s amazing. This would explain why Ratbert says their names in his mantra.
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