Posted by
Bloelfed on Thursday, July 03, 2008 10:48:40 PM
The United States is now governed by not much more than public opinion polls.
At least that is my premise. The public wants out of Iraq, so smart politicians are claiming they too want to get out of Iraq.
The public thinks that drilling for oil in the US is bad for the environment so smart politicians do not allow drilling for oil in places that the US probably has oil.
The public thinks gasoline prices are too high, so smart politicians come up with plans to take the profits away from the shareholders of oil companies and give it back to, well itself.
The problem is; the public has the ability to hold completely contrary opinions about the exact same issue.
So, since opinions do not require any knowledge is this a wise way to govern? Do we the public have a 'right' to be ignorant about pretty-much anything? Does the government have the right to keep the citizens of the country from finding out the actual truth necessary for them to have knowledge.
First let's agree that the standard definition of 'knowledge' requires three necessary and sufficient conditions; justifiable, true, belief.
Post-modernists will wish to claim that there is no 'truth.' That is palpable rubbish from a completely bankrupt philosophy that enjoys over much prestige in the lower-end faculties of most Universities. Education, Sociology, Linguistics, Education Psychology, Journalism and those other pseudo-sciences short on the science end and not as well developed as the actual Liberal Arts. On can see the source of many of the problems that we now are dealing with in these departments.
It isn't that these practitioners are of low intellect, but rather they start from flawed premises and from there build a house of cards that always leads them to think that a better world would be wrought if only 'they' were in charge.
Meanwhile, 'truth' is becoming fungible. With it, we are getting more and more ignorant about the world around us.
So if you ask the average American what the solution to high fuel prices are, you will hear them say energy independence is the answer. If you then ask how that is to be achieved they might say, alternative fuels. If you then ask them if they believe in Global Climate Change, they will say "of course." But if you ask them if they know which fuel has a lower carbon footprint they will in error opine that Ethanol is.
In few cases will you find that the person being questioned has any actual 'knowledge' about any of these issues.
The press systematically lies to them. The internet is probably worse.
However with little effort and a reasonable level of literacy one can become informed on these and virtually any topic worthy of discussion.
Which then leads to my concern about if ignorance is a right. Stupidity is a perfect excuse for not actually being capable of knowledge. But nothing else is.
What do you think.
On the one hand we always claim that everyone has a 'right' to their opinion. Where did that 'right' come from, where is it enshrined? We have a right to freedom of speech, but does that mean we have a 'right' to speak lies when the truth can be found? Do we have the 'right' to lie to a judge and jury or to Congress? Since we don't (obviously people do) do we have a 'right' to simply lie to anyone and everyone else.
This has lead to chaos in our political system, it has lead to the public holding politicians in deep disrespect and it has lead to the cynical drive to power by politicians who are less interested in public service and much more interested in coining their office.
When did this become acceptable to us? When did we start to believe that real solutions could be found with magical thinking?
Cheers,
Bloefeld