Why uneducated people know so much ... and educated people know so little

I have given much of my life in support of education. Without education, where would we be? In the Dark Ages again, no doubt. Some of us, too many of us, live there by choice already.

I am not talking so much about so-called “formal” education here. One can be a high school dropout and be richly self-educated (though, for many reasons, those souls are few and far between). One can have a doctorate degree and think foolishly and irrationally.

I am primarily talking here about self-education. The kind that most any of us can do, if we would, regardless of our formal education, or lack thereof.

I’m talking about our method of trying to find out the truth of things. So many of us these days appear to depend on the media to “tell us the truth”. I know of no media that does this. None. They all have ways in which they “slant” the news, whether they intend to or not - though most certainly very much intend to do so. A couple of media stations I’ve watched, in particular, slant it so drastically toward one ideology that I think to myself, “No wonder so many people in America are swallowed up right now by so many unreasonable, irrational and completely unproven political conspiracy theories.”

I have a dear friend who knows a lot (or claims she does). She is a delightful soul, with a genuine spirit of kindness and goodness. But she knows far more than I do about many things. And she tells me so. Frequently. Especially if the topic goes to politics.

Like most people I know who claim to know a lot she often talks loudly, as if doing so makes what she says to be true (sometimes she makes me wish I had earplugs). With immense conviction, she will spout off to me about why all people who vote a certain way are evil, why our public schools are filled with Communists, and why no one should ever get vaccinated. She offers no real evidence for any of these things she “knows” to be true. Often, it seems she has heard the truth on her favorite news channel.

I sometimes try to gently prod my friend into realizing that she actually “knows” none of these things; she simply “believes” them to be true. But, alas, reason is to no avail with people who know so much.

Like so many of us, my dear friend confuses “knowing” with “believing”.

I have another friend who “knows” the upcoming presidential election is already rigged. I have another who “knows” that all Muslims and Jews are bad. And yet another who “knows” that global climate change is all a hoax (perhaps they should visit Erwin TN or Asheville NC right now).

I even had one friend tell me he’d actually shoot me with a gun for disagreeing with his “undeniable truth”, if I weren’t a friend. (Perhaps I should consider donning a bullet-proof vest when around such friends, along with the ear plugs.)

None of these friends offers any reasonable and verifiable proof as to what they “know” to be true. Yet they all claim to know these things “in their heart”.

As Shakespeare said, “Ay, there’s the rub.” The heart is not the place of knowledge and reason. It is filled with emotion; and emotion blinds us all to the truth.

I am a very emotional person. I love being that way. I cry at movies. I cheer at ballgames. And I laugh at most anything, as my closest friends will tell you.

Yet, I know “how I feel” is no substitute for what’s real, for the objective truth.