Harmfulness of Knowledge

Gaining knowledge according to Lao Tzu is not a good thing if one wishes to follow the Tao. For him, gaining knowledge means creating distinctions or divisions such as good and evil, hot and cold, pass or fail, etc. Such distinctions separates things, thus makes things seemingly unequal.  These distinctions influence a person in making judgments which will turn out biased. When one has knowledge, which is distinctions, he would most probably choose the one which he would benefit from, thus rejecting the other. This rejection is not part of the way of nature, as in it, everything is equal. When one is rejected, it would mean that the other is much more important or valuable than him/her/it. Aside from creating distinctions, knowledge also results in consequences that are far beyond ones intention. For example, when one has distinguished good and evil, one would probably choose good as it has a positive effect on him. When the evil is rejected, then there would be pain in the part of the rejected evil. The one who chose good over evil doesn’t have the intention of hurting the evil, but as a consequence of his action, he just did.