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All men by nature desire to know.

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Aristotle, when he wrote this, was saying that the thing that makes human beings different

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from other creatures, the thing that defines us is the pursuit and acquisition of knowledge.

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This is not just to say that we, human beings, are curious creatures.

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It is to say that our ability to think about and to act on the world around us is bound

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up with our ability to know it.

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To be alive as a human being is to know in the same way as it is to have a heart that

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beats.

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We all understand this in mundane ways.

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We understand, for instance, that part of being a fully independent adult, making choices

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about life, is learning about the world around us and informing our choices with that learning.

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In the book of Proverbs it says, by wisdom a house is built, and through understanding

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it is established.

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From knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.

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But there is something more to all of this.

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The very next saying in Proverbs is, the wise are mightier than the strong.

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This is the earliest occurrence known to me of the now well-known idea, knowledge is power.

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To keep a person ignorant is to place them in a cage.

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So it follows that the powerful, if they want to keep their power, will try to know as much

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about us as they can, and they will try to make sure that we know as little about them

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as is possible.

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I see this insight everywhere, both in religious writings, which promised emancipation from political

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repression, and in the revolutionary works promising liberation from the repressive dogmas

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of the church and the state.

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The powerful throughout history have understood this.

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The invention of the printing press was opposed by the old powers of Europe because it spelled

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the end of their control of knowledge, and therefore the end of their tenure as power brokers.

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The Protestant Reformation was not just a religious movement, but a political struggle.

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The fight to liberate hoarded knowledge through translation and dissemination.

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Through the confessional system, the Catholic Church spied upon the lives of its congregants,

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while Latin mass excluded most people, who could not speak Latin, from an understanding

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of the very system of thought that bound them.

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Knowledge has always flowed upwards, to bishops and kings, not down to serfs and slaves.

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The principle remains the same in the present era.

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Governments disclosed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden show that governments dare to aspire

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through their intelligence agencies to a godlike knowledge about each and every one of us.

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But at the same time, they hide their actions behind official secrecy.

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As our governments and corporations know more and more about us, we know less and less about

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them.

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The policy, as always, is to channel the decisive information upwards, never downwards.

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Today remember that it is good to seek to empower the powerless through knowledge,

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and to drag the machinations of the powerful into the daylight.

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We must be unapologetic about that most basic of humanities, the desire to know.

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The powerful would do well to remember the words of one of history's great activists,

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as recorded in the book of Matthew.

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There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.

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What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered

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in the ear, in the inner rooms, will be proclaimed, at last, from rooftop to rooftop.