"Real Knowledge Is to Know the Extent of One's Ignorance" - Confucius

Ignorance

If you are a successful degree holder, or you have already your master's degree in the line of profession that you chose, or PhD, how far do you know everything? Does real knowledge be measured from achieving the highest degree of education? 

There are billions of heads in this world, billions of heads with billions of brains. If, for the sake of argument, 60 percent of 6 billion heads achieved what I stated above, how can we define the other 40 percent balance of the 6 billion heads? 

Assuming that the 40 percent of the world population (not including infants and children of course) are not as learned or educated in academics as you are, do they be considered ignorant? This is my understanding with this proverb.

Nobody is perfect. Nobody knows everything. Even those genius personalities whose knowledge can't be measured because of their great achievements, still they can be ignorant in some other things. 

I give you an example. It's a very simple example because I just base my understanding in a very simple way. An architect can only create the design of a building and the architect's job is on the functionality of the design. An architect needs an engineer to oversee the construction, maintenance, and building structures. The architect will give to the engineer his design, and the engineer will do the structural plan and to make sure that the design of the building made by the architect is followed. So an architect cannot be an engineer, and an engineer cannot be an architect. 

Meanwhile, an engineer cannot do the construction works. He has to engage a contractor to do the construction. The engineer will give the structural plan to the contractor. The contractor cannot do the construction himself too.  He has to hire a foreman to supervise the construction works. The foreman shall be in charge of hiring skilled and unskilled workers. The skilled workers are carpenters, plumbers, painters, and other jobs that only those who have skills can do. 

The skilled workers needs unskilled men to assist them, like laborers which do not have the skill of doing what skilled workers can do, but have the "skill" of doing diligently what they are asked to do, even in their so called "lowest position". 

This is how I understand "real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance" of Confucius. We all need each other because no matter how learned we are, we still need the knowledge of others to add to whatever things we don't know yet. We may know a lot of things, but still we don't know some other things...and that is our ignorance. We need to fill our ignorance by learning from others what we don't know...yet. Life is a continued learning process regardless of who we are and what we are.