What Do You "Know"?

While on the bus yesterday, I overheard two guys, both white and either in their late teens or early twenties, discussing racism in the state of Texas. One guy was telling the other that the closer you get to the border, the worse it gets. I, having lived almost two years near the city of San Antonio, piped up and asked him if that's where he's from. He turned and told me that he had never actually been to Texas. He said that, from what he read on the Internet that he felt quite knowledgeable on the subject. I told him that I lived there for a while, and where I was at, there was zero tolerance for racism. He didn't believe me until I pulled out my Texas ID and showed it to him. There was a prompt change of subject and I went back to my game of cribbage on my phone.

So, that's what this post is going to be about: What do you "know". We live in an age where information is literally at our fingertips. I can read about Jack the Ripper and the daily lives of those in Mesoptamia with ease. But, while there is a plethora of actual knowledge, there is even more disinformation out there from people posing to be scholars. And everyone seems to be a scholar on everything nowadays.

Now, it is possible that there is rampant racism in border cities like El Paso; but having never been there, I'm not going to claim any knowledge on the subject. However, San Antonio is far enough south for me to speak up on the matter. The point is that I have first hand experience of the area that he was speaking about. I also try and not claim to know something I don't know anything about. Not without researching it immensely first. In my humble opinion, it is better to spread small truths than large lies.

The other point I'm trying to make is that, with so many dime store digital sages, debate has been replaced with flame wars. We have become so polarized by the illusion of information that nothing is discussed at length on an impersonal level any more. The more open-minded we pretend to be, the more close-minded we are towards anyone who threatens our individual world views. Plato has been replaced with pundits and Socrates with saccharine sites containing snipits of  facts. The web has become a digital fast food buffet to which we gladly tuck in our napkins and feast upon data created by the wizards behind the curtain. There is a saying that "Unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything." (Peter Marshall, U.S. Senate chaplain, 1947). I would amend this (mainly because everyone stands for something nowadays) to saying "Unless we research something, we shall fall for anything."

Yes, I realize this tangent is completely different than what I normally post about, but it's a topic that has become a bit of a pet peeve of mine. We live in a world now where everyone "knows" everything and discusses nothing. Everyone is trying so hard to be smarter than everyone else, but no one is bothering to be wiser than anyone.