Classifying Knowledge as Basic Necessity just Like Food!

Food (including drink), clothing and shelter are the well known basic necessities or physiological needs for human life. Now, time has demanded another basic necessity for sustaining human life; knowledge.

The world has become more dynamic, complex and volatile making life difficult to sustain than ever in history.  Difficult to predict the future and ascertain the basic physiological needs let alone the safety, social and other higher stage human needs! Thus, knowledge is the only solution to achieve the basic needs of man in our world today. We can, therefore, group knowledge as the fourth basic necessity for human life.

What is knowledge?

In my definition, knowledge is a commodity that can be produced, transferred and consumed. Like any commodity, knowledge is bought and sold and can be measured in monetary value in the market.

There are two types of knowledge; academic and experiential. Academic knowledge is produced through academic research while experiential knowledge from experience. Both can be stored (e.g. books, and any medium of storage), transferred (education, training, etc) and consumed (applied on work). Both are essential as academic knowledge enables one to frame problems/opportunities to solve/exploit while experiential knowledge enables to design and implement opportunities or design and solve problems.

Knowledge Transfer

It is high time that knowledge transfer be practice-based in order to enable the knowledge receiver to be engaged into practice, avoid fear, take risks and challenge this dynamic, complex and volatile world. Practice-based education can build both emotional buy-in and intellectual buy-in at the same time on the knowledge receiver. This makes the knowledge receiver a champion in her tackle of the challenging world.

Governments Responsibility

The minimum responsibility expected from governments is to fulfil their society’s basic needs. As I mentioned earlier, it has come too difficult to the bottom of the pyramid (the billion poor) to fulfil their basic needs i.e. food, clothing and shelter without having the instrument of the invisible knowledge. Thus, governments need to be well aware to transfer quality and practice-based knowledge to their society than ever not only with the conception of building capacity but also fulfilling the minimum needs of a society to enable them maintain their livelihood.