“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing: and that is I know nothing.” This very humbling line was uttered by Socrates, one of the great thinkers who walked this earth. The line says so much about how it is easier to accumulate knowledge when a person readily accepts his need for it and not pretend that he already knows a lot in this world. This might also be the very reason why Socrates was able to expand the reaches of his understanding. He knew for a fact that his own lifetime was not enough to learn everything there is to learn in this world.
This very line could also be used to explain why it is much easier to teach children than adults. Yes, there are other factors that could explain why children learn new information much faster such as better memory retention and the likes. However, more than these reasons, there lies an attitudinal problem in the psyche of adults. Most adults have this snobbish characteristic, especially those who have already attained some degree of education, that they have already learned everything that they need to learn, forgetting the very fact that the quest for knowledge is a never ending feat.
Yes, one is much wiser if one understands the nature of knowledge. It is never static and it is very much evolving. Knowledge also is not the same for all locations, society, gender and all variations of individuals. What one may have learned in the confines of his society will never be the same with what others have learned in their own set of societies.
Analyzing this trend, an individual would get the idea that one of the reasons why dispute arises is because many people forget this very big difference in the kind of wisdom that they accumulate over the years. Also, there is the factor of underestimating certain forms of knowledge by placing one form of knowledge in a pedestal, eventually leading to categorizing certain form of knowledge as superior and inferior. Needless to say, this often results to conflicts and disputes.