Columnists
How do we know what we know?
Answer is: we don’t. That’s it for this week’s column. Thanks for reading.
Sorry. Corey just informed me that he can’t run a three-sentence column. So I guess I need to elaborate. First: There’s lots of things to know. There are scientists and astronomists and economists and consultants and a huge load of people who know stuff. But they only know what they know. I know this may sound strange, but they only know what they know.
What they know is based on things they have learned, and things they have been taught. For example, some economist came up with the US concept of a ‘Trickle-down Economy’ which involved giving potloads of money to rich corporate moguls, who then pass a part of their potload to the struggling workers way down in the basement of their corporations, who struggle to pay their rent. There’s a huge LOL here, though nothing to laugh about. The rich giving to the poor. Never happened.
SO LET’S TALK ABOUT THE ECONOMY
No one knows how it works. I would end this column here, on a triumphant note, but I am told I need more words to be an actual ‘column writer’. So I offer this: I watched a TV interview with four top economists. You would think they would all be fist-bumping, hugging, and maybe forcing out a few tears (as if economists have the ability to cry). But no. They all violently disagreed.
So absorb this: Respected economists almost get in a fist-fight about the economy. What needs to be done. Where it’s headed. Total disagreement.
This puzzles me. They are all looking at the same situation, i.e. the state of the economy and where it’s headed.
Sure, if you asked me, I would say, “Wha? The economy has something to do with money, right?” But these guys live in this world. They apparently have solid gold degrees saying: “I know stuff.” But they obviously don’t. Or they would all be giving thumbs up to each other, and fist-bumping like crazy, and then texting to get together for an economist orgy involving Monopoly money, and a lot more fistbumping.
Sorry, got lost in that scenario.
IS KNOWLEDGE USEFUL?
Absolutely not. But Corey keeps saying, “Can you expand on that?” Well, he came to the right place.
Knowledge is overrated. There, I said it. It isn’t what you know, but how you use it. Any of us who have kids want them to go top universities, so they can have ‘knowledge’. This is a guarantee that their lives will be filled with joy, because they have knowledge.
Thousands of dollars go into this pursuit of knowledge. That’s a good thing, because ‘knowing stuff’ is never squandered. It helps us grow. But still, it isn’t what you know, but how you spend it.
USING YOUR BRAIN
Processing information is what the brain is built for. What you know; what you learned, are only pieces of what you are.
Here’s an example: We had a trivia team for some charity, I think Hospice. We came in second, thanks to my answer: What was the name of the Jetsons’ dog? (Answer later.) My team said I was really smart. I told them it wasn’t smart, it was just the ability to recall useless information on demand. Nothing smart about it.
Each of us have ways of processing information. That’s how the brain works. Some of us don’t remember what we did yesterday, yet remember their ninth birthday party. This is normal human behaviour. We have dreams which are inexplicable, but the brain is processing things it needs to deal with, so you can carry on.
WHERE DOES KNOWLEDGE COME FROM?
This is a change in direction again, but knowledge does not exist. Sure, we learn stuff. I got trapped at a party by someone who knew everything—I mean everything—about renaissance art. That was a boatload of Knowledge, wasted on me.
So where does Knowledge come from? Everywhere now, depending on your source for knowledge. We used to get our information the slow way: Through news reporters on the ground. Some of us remember Walter Cronkite, and Huntley and Brinkley. Voices to be trusted. Not so anymore.
Now it’s voices everywhere, with no one to trust. Knowledge? It has no use anymore. Truth? Gone the way of knowledge. We all think we know what’s going on. What’s the right way to think? We turn to ‘news’ outlets that support our point of view. If that view is conservative, Fox News fills your bill. There’s tons of liberal outlets, who are often too weirdly far-left wing to be believed. There is no knowledge here. Only opinions, shouted loudly. This is not information. It is not even ‘news’, it is just ‘news adjacent’. It is news spun to suit your tastes, because they know what you want to hear. This is not good for anyone. And it can tear our society apart. Knowing what you choose to know is not knowing.
CONVERSATION & UNDERSTANDING
People spend way, way too much time tuning into their favourite TV channels, and their favourite chat rooms. There is no information there. Only ravings that are eagerly consumed by their audience.
What’s missing here is conversation. Talk and listen, not just listen and believe. No genuine knowledge to be found there.
I’ve never been in an actual bar fight (except once but that’s a story too long to tell. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t win) but that’s the mentality of where we’re at right now. Talk and listen. Hate to break it to you, but blindly following other people’s crazy conjectures is not knowledge.
WE DON’T KNOW WHAT WE DON’T KNOW
Every day I have people in my shop, telling the craziest stories of being jumped on by Revenue Canada, or restaurants being persecuted by Health inspectors who don’t know how things work, but want to make it stop.
How does this happen to us? I have a theory. There are several levels of hierarchy in Ontario. There’s us. By that I mean people who want to live and work here. There’s other people who have the financial ability to buy into a County that is becoming way less affordable to Group One. Then there’s the municipal government that creates strange multi-million dollar plans Group One and Two have problems with. Then the province and the feds, who have a big barrel of rules, but walk away when we need them.
When you add in powerful lobby groups pressuring governments to get their way, you can see how we got where we got. Knowing it doesn’t mean a damn. Changing it? Impossible.
Knowing it is worthless, thereby knowledge is worthless.
If you’re standing on a train track faced with an oncoming train. That’s knowledge—you’re about to die. Finding a way to stay alive is a challenge.
We need to face that. BTW The Jetsons’ dog was Astro.
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