How Ignorance Affects Us

Once when I was in Standard One in 1994, I glanced at a picture of a coin that a classmate had drawn on paper. The picture was perfectly done and while I can't recall what I thought of it, I am sure I wondered how on earth someone could draw a coin that perfectly.

Later on, I learnt that drawing a coin is a simple process. One just puts it under a paper, then streaks and blacks out the paper, and bingo! The details of the coin are automatically reproduced on the paper. And the drawing process works only when the streaking and blacking out is done with a pencil, not with a biro.

Had I not learnt that simple process of drawing a coin, I would have wasted many hours trying to come up with a perfect picture of a coin with my inexperienced hands. That has made me realize how ignorance can cost us time and energy.

Recently, I had an experience with my laptop that taught me that ignorance does indeed cost us time and energy. Would you like to hear the whole story?

Well, last year when I bought a new laptop, I could turn its volume up and down by pressing F3 and F2 keys respectively. But after some time, those two keys stopped adjusting my laptop volume and started doing some other tasks I wasn't interested in.

Since I don't like exposing my ears to loud sounds when listening to music using earphones, I had to keep adjusting my laptop volume by clicking a sound icon on the taskbar which made a pop-up window appear on the screen. I would then use the mouse to adjust the laptop volume by dragging a slider on the pop-up window, a rather tedious process for me.

Not wanting to waste more time and energy on such a tedious process, I searched for a solution on the internet on how I could make my laptop F3 and F2 keys adjust its volume. One website recommended that I uninstall the keyboard driver and then restart my laptop. I did those two steps but they didn't work.

Still craving for a speedy way of adjusting my laptop volume, I visited another website to see if it had a different solution. The website was actually a forum where I found a post by a person who had a problem similar to mine. A participant in the forum advised the person to adjust her laptop volume by pressing the Fn key before pressing F3 and F2 keys.

On trying that method on my laptop, I was pleased to note that it worked. But I still found it tedious to keep pressing the Fn key. I wished I could adjust my laptop volume by just pressing F3 and F2 keys like I used to do before something strange happened to those two keys.

That dissatisfaction notwithstanding, I settled on pressing the Fn key every time I needed to adjust my laptop volume with F3 and F2 keys. The process was less hassle than the one that begins with clicking on a sound icon on the taskbar.

About two weeks ago as I was happily reflecting about something, I thought of using the Fn key to turn off a light on the 'Escape' key which had always been on when I was using my laptop. The thing worked.

Guess what! Moments later, I noted that I could turn my laptop volume up and down using F3 and F2 keys without pressing the Fn key. It turned out that the ability of F3 and F2 keys to adjust my laptop volume had been disabled when I unknowingly pressed Fn and 'Escape' keys simultaneously.

My ignorance about the use of the Fn key made me waste time and energy adjusting my laptop volume by a tedious process. Imagine I had to keep going through that tedious process because the songs on my laptop have varying sound levels.

Ignorance is not bliss. Not only does it cost us time and energy, it also makes us fritter away money and resources. Former Harvard president Derek Bok was on point when he quipped, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."

Let us therefore do all we can to reduce our ignorance by growing our wealth of knowledge. And how can we grow in knowledge? By reading good books, listening to edifying songs, watching educational programs, visiting interesting places and having stimulating conversations with people.

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RECOMMENDATION: If you've enjoyed the above story on how ignorance affects us, you might also enjoy another one on "The Importance of Knowledge" which I wrote a few years ago. Just click on that link in blue to dive straight into the story.