But if the world could remain within a frame like a painting on a wall, then I think we would see the beauty

This summer, I’ve committed myself to exploring works of art.
In my desire to become more cultured and knowledgeable, I’ve composed lists of critically acclaimed movies that I want to watch and classically renowned books that I want to read.
I want to explore music, poetry, artwork, philosophy. I want to explore everything humanity has to offer, everything within the realm of my understanding, everything within my tastes and appreciation. And not just the classics, but pop culture as well, indie culture or hipster culture, whatever you want to call it.

In my quest for knowledge and culture, one of the books I’ve started reading is The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. While reading, I stumbled upon a quote that seemed particularly appropriate:

“…we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man – this is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing."

I had to stop and reread that passage because it was so overwhelmingly true.
In myself and in others, I’ve found that we all want to impress people. I want to understand references and allusions made by others and to hold my own in a conversation between intellectuals.
But it is only trivial knowledge if it is used as a selfish device to appear superior and advanced.

Some people think that beautiful people are intimidating, and that may be true, but in my opinion there is nothing more intimidating than someone who is more knowledgeable and intelligent than yourself. I think that it spawns from the inherent fear that intelligent people are always judging and criticizing those less intelligent than themselves. Which, most often than not, is true.

So we fill our heads with the masterpieces of others, trying to outdo one another, casually inserting obscure references to films or bands in everyday conversation in an effort to sound educated. It becomes a cultural arms race that lacks basic meaning and truth.
We try to makes ourselves relevant as to not be forgotten.

But in the end, it doesn’t really matter if we can argue the differences between Plato or Socrates or if we know all the lyrics to Bob Dylan or if we can list Stanley Kubrick’s movies or if we can quote Shakespeare.
What matters is what we do with this knowledge.
We should let it inspire us to create our own masterpieces, to leave our own mark on the world. We should let their works be a monument to the creative greatness and intellectual depth that humanity can achieve.
And if nothing more, we should just sit back and enjoy what they created.