IS KNOWLEDGE GENERAL???

Who is the deputy speaker of Lok Sabha? I quizzed one of my friends over Facebook messenger. “Dude! You crazy or what?” came a quick but well anticipated answer from the other side. Though I knew it was specific, I capitalized this opportunity to highlight my quizzing competence and mock my friend for his pitiable “general knowledge”. My friend gave a very logical reply asserting that the question can’t be termed as one being attributed to general knowledge, pressing on the fact that it was way beyond the reasonable domain of being general and deep into the territory of being specific. No matter what, millions of websites, magazines, coaching classes and you tube videos are dedicated in dealing with questions like these which test your specific or rather general knowledge about anything from an ant hill infrastructure to latest findings about the god particle at CERN. No wonder, we are often perplexed at this point, what is general knowledge?

According to my common sense (you might definitely disagree), general knowledge is the knowledge which can be acquired by any individual without undergoing extensive training and specialization in a particular field of study. It is nothing but a lifetime of priceless treasure hunting; things keep getting added and deleted in a very meticulous manner. Semblance holds to the “mind temple” as portrayed in the popular TV series Sherlock Holmes. This colossal archive of knowledge can be neatly segregated into broad streams as static knowledge and the dynamic ones. The static domain being flooded with eternal facts like capitals, rivers, mountain ranges, historic people/events and the dynamic domain referring to important positions, current affairs and recent undertakings by organizations/governments. People are usually expected to know a minimal amount of facts (though many may be trivial) about their surroundings, culture, environment and opportunities. So, things turn out to be particularly nasty when you stumble across a person who does not know the prime minister of India or the capital of the state he is living in. We often brand that person as dumb and find a very good reason to ridicule him every time we meet him by propping a similarly styled question (sadistic isn’t it?)

Though many people would still argue brazenly, “how has your knowing about the capital of Mongolia helped you in your struggle with life?” True, not at all except at extremely rare occasions where I am being quizzed and this question on Ulan Bator props up out of the blue. Quiz! Quiz and quiz! It haunts many of us. So who started this quiz and stuff? Legend has it that in Dublin, a theatre owner entered into a bet to introduce a new word in the English language within 24 hours, he hired the locals and painted the word “quiz” across the length and breadth of all the street walls. Since it was a total nonsensical word that time, people took it as being some sort of test for recruitment of industrial workers and sailors. Today after centuries, that very word has made sense and a very proper one; transforming into one of the most popular means of entertainment, leisure and modes of testing. So if you watch Kaun Banega Crorepati? You have indirectly participated in a quiz and that to enthusiastically, protected in your sofa from public humiliation of not knowing giveaway questions.

So, why does this quiz need to test general knowledge? Well, to test an individual. How does general knowledge make relevance to popular quizzes? Again because, this knowledge can be acquired by anyone and thus appeals to everybody. Then you might raise your hand again, shouting out that this knowledge still isn’t general! This brings us back to square one. The bottom line is, that if some organization or an institution is hunting for a top notch executive, it will definitely be looking for a candidate who is open to diverse experiences and is also having a keen interest about his environment (city, country, even the globe). At this juncture the intelligence of an individual also comes into picture, not in direct terms but certainly in an indirect manner. An individual’s ability to stack data meticulously into his mind shows a strong correlation between his experiences and the neuro-physical reactions taking place inside his/her mind temple. Thus, taking into account the precise purpose of the quiz, it won’t be wrong to call the questions being asked to be classified as general because these specific questions are general in nature to the profession/institution/organization and their employees/students as well. Still confused? It means you are bound to be quizzed for what you desire or even more what the organizations desire in their candidates.So next time, when somebody in the interviewing panel of ISRO props up the question about the percentage methane content in the atmosphere of Mars, please don’t be confused whether they were testing your general or specific knowledge!