the New Pantagruel

Knowledge is Not Power and Other Paradoxes

by James Schall, S. J.

ast year for Christmas, a student from Miami gave me a Peanuts calendar containing the daily cartoons from 1994. The five-part sequence for September 15 begins with Lucy standing in right field oblivious of things about her, especially, as is her wont, of the game that Charlie Brown is pitching and trying vainly to win. Suddenly, we see that a fly ball drops out of the sky and “bonks” on Lucy’s baseball-capped head. Annoyed, she charges to the mound where Charlie stands ready to field her complaints. “Hey, Manager,” she yells at him, “I’m not sure I want to play right field anymore.” In a daze, she, notoriously poor outfielder that she is, continues in explanation, “I was standing out there and something hit me on the head….” With some ironic sympathy, Charlie replies, “I wonder what it could have been?” Lucy turns back to right field, “Who knows?” she answers, “We live in a strange world, don’t we?” And to this Charlie quickly adds, “with a lot of strange people.”

Lucy, of course, is pictured as someone who does not know what object is likely to fall out of the sky in right field. She does not anticipate that it is the fly ball that she is out there to catch. She is clueless. She thinks that the “strange objects” flitting about the skies might be anything but baseballs. Charlie is more sober. He is sure the problem is not with strange objects falling out of the skies, but rather with the stranger people, like Lucy, who cannot be bothered to catch simple fly balls landing on their heads.

But if the world is in fact full of strange objects and even stranger people, as it no doubt is, what is that to us? If we are normal, our instincts are to find out just what objects do fall into right field. And when they do fall, we know that we are supposed to catch them. The cartoon is amusing because Lucy does not know or care what is the primary task of a fielder while she is standing in right field. She is aware of everything but the game. Her lack of interest and competence, naturally, drives Charlie Brown, the hapless manager, crazy. He cannot understand either such disinterest or such incompetence, especially as he suspects, in Lucy’s case, that both are deliberate. There is only one thing worse than not knowing, and that is choosing not to know.

In order to catch a fly ball in right field, we have to be looking for it. We cannot be standing there with our heads down staring at the grass. We cannot catch a ball if we do not know it is falling on our head. Even worse, we cannot catch it if we do not know that this catching is why we are there in the first place. To be sure, we may not catch it even if we see it falling in front of us. We may mis-judge it, or overrun it, or trip over our feet. Simply knowing that the ball is being hit to right field where we are positioned does not, by itself, enable us to catch the ball. We still have use our knowledge. We must choose to go and actually catch it. We have to coordinate our eyes, our hands, our mind, and our legs. Our knowledge has to get out of our heads into action.

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