"Corpus Christi"

We live surrounded by information—abundant, immediate, incessant. Data flows faster than thought, and with every scroll, click, or swipe, the world offers itself in fragments. But amidst this deluge, something essential is being lost: the difference between having access to information and knowing.

The distinction is not trivial. It marks the gap between accumulation and understanding, between quantity and transformation. Information can be produced indefinitely. There is no limit to how many posts can populate our feeds, how many articles can be uploaded, how many videos can be stored. But our capacity to learn, to truly integrate what we encounter into a meaningful cognitive and ethical structure, remains deeply human—and therefore limited. There are physiological constraints, of course: time, attention, mental energy. But there are also existential ones. Learning requires more than exposure. It demands intention, slowness, friction. It is not enough to register that something has been said; one must wrestle with it, relate it to other ideas, test it against experience. Only then does it begin to take root as knowledge. This is why a “knowledge base,” no matter how vast, does not make a person knowledgeable. One can access a million pages and remain untouched, unchanged. Knowledge, in its fuller sense, is not something downloaded. It is something cultivated.

Social media—today’s primary engine of exposure—illustrates this paradox. It offers everything: facts, opinions, insights, outrage, banality. But the constant stimulation does not translate into deeper understanding. Instead, it often short-circuits reflection. What remains is not knowledge, but noise.

There is also the question of how we learn. Not in theory, but in practice. Here, too, the digital promise of automated instruction, intelligent platforms, and infinite scalability misses the point. No interface, however advanced, can replace the encounter with another human being who teaches not only through concepts, but through presence.

In my own experience, the teachers who left a mark on me—who made me want to become a man of culture—were never the most orthodox or aligned with institutional expectations. They were vivid. Charismatic. Passionate. Imperfect, and often at odds with the very institutions they served. And it was precisely this contrast that made them appear free. They taught as though education were not a bureaucratic exercise, but an existential adventure—a way of inhabiting life more intensely, more truthfully.

There is a scene in Corpus Christi (Jan Komasa, 2009) that captures this beautifully. Daniel, a young man with a criminal past, pretends to be a priest in a small Polish village. Despite his deception, or perhaps because of it, he throws himself into the role with extraordinary sincerity. His sermons are raw, emotional, sometimes inappropriate. He confesses—publicly—to having killed someone. And yet, the parishioners follow him. Not because he knows doctrine better than others, but because he embodies something they recognize as real: he believes, he feels, he struggles. He is charismatic, passionate, imperfect—human. His words reach the people not in spite of, but through, his brokenness. He offers not authority, but authenticity.

This kind of figure enters the heart, and once seen, is not easily forgotten. There is something in us that still responds—perhaps always will—to those who speak with their whole being, even (especially) when they defy the expected form. Institutions may offer structure, but it is the encounter that transforms.

That kind of teaching cannot be replaced by content delivery. It is not replicable, because it is not procedural. It is relational, affective, and unpredictable. It invites students not only to learn about knowledge, but to desire it.

The same logic applies to books. A paper book does not merely contain content; it offers an experience. The weight of pages, the margin notes, the ability to move backward and forward with one’s hands—these are not nostalgic details. They are part of how knowledge settles, how it becomes part of the body, not just the brain.

Samuel Johnson once remarked that people need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed. And perhaps this is the crux of the matter. Learning is recursive. It grows through repetition, variation, and resonance. It is not about constant novelty, but about returning differently to what we thought we already knew.

More importantly, knowledge is never neutral. It is always filtered—by judgment, by intuition, by conscience. Common sense mediates how we apply what we know, allowing for discretion, irony, even rebellion. Morality anchors knowledge in a framework of responsibility. Knowing how to do something does not tell us whether we should.

A society that forgets this—that treats humans as information-processing machines—risks producing obedience without wisdom. A machine can be filled with knowledge, but it will never ask why, or for whom, or at what cost. It will never hesitate.

True knowledge, human knowledge, is inseparable from hesitation. From context. From doubt, error, and care.

That is why we must continue to defend the difference between knowing that and knowing how, between having data and being formed. The former can be scaled. The latter cannot. It must be lived.