When it comes to “what’s more important in life?” type of questions, many parents tell their kids it is the knowledge that they should have in order to live a better future life. That’s why education is a profitable business model: people are willing to put their kids through this “sacred” system, because the conception is that one cannot otherwise have a better life for themselves. This is not completely true, though. Knowledge is not something that takes you to a better life by default. It is not something that exists without the thought-generating human machines, which we call scientists and/or teachers. In this sense, it is not “directly fundamental” to the world we live in; maybe slightly better way to put this is, it is not the first-class experience for humans. Knowledge is derived, second-hand experience. The first-hand, more fundamental experiences for humans are gained by taking actions that they are capable of taking by using their limbs. I want you to think about this: if knowledge was truly the only way to strive for if you wanted to build a better future for yourself, how would a mother living in 300,000 BCE could have possibly tell her kid that knowledge is very important? The people living in 300,000 BCE couldn’t even probably talk, let alone having a word in their vocabulary for “knowledge”. Then what were the parents doing to make their kids live a better life? They were probably teaching them how to walk, how to run, how to hun, how to eat raw meat more efficiently, and so on. All of this was being passed to kids as important skills to have so that they could have a better life of their own someday… so that one of them would smash to rocks and get something sparky by accident. When the first spark became the first fire lit, and they were like “oh, we definitely going Mars next year”, they probably decided that this should be something to pass to the next generation along with the other previous things. Only then, making fire became a piece of knowledge, a key for a better-than-ever-before life. The point is that the knowledge (in the sense of the word used commonly) didn’t come first, the actions did. There was no k nowledge to be learned until someone took some actions to produce it for the first time. So, it is important to understand that it’s still the same in the so-called modern times that we live in: If you make your child believe that the knowledge is the single most important thing, then he/she will always run around other people who makes knowledge, and this will create a dependence relation where the kid will grow up physically but will also feel helpless without the presence of other “smart” ones. Whereas, if you somehow teach your kid the importance of taking actions and becoming autonomous, they have a chance in becoming the new knowledge makers of their life times. Now the knowledge followers, the knowledge makers.

Autonomy beats knowledge… if you have to have one of the either only. Autonomy is actions. Knowledge is the accelerator. Your knowledge becomes useless when you fail to put it into actions. You have to have autonomy at all costs, even without knowledge (and in fact, especially if you have the knowledge). Knowledge will only help when you are already taking some actions, that is, it will accelerate the process significantly and let you reach the destination faster. It is life a turbo engine for a car – you have to have a car in the first place so that the turbo engine can take you faster to the destination.