I recommend this post highly. Its subject matter is extremely important in almost every area that impacts our lives today, but since it seems to lie outside the issues that are most loudly trumpeted as urgent, critical issues, the fact that the “half-educated” it refers to (or less, actually) are mostly creating the problems that face us mostly disappears in the noise.
The author of the linked post applies the problem of people who think they know more than they do to the influence such people have exerted to bring about the current economic woes we face, but that only touches the very tip-top 1/4 inch of the iceberg, leaving the rest (including that which is submerged*) to bedevil us.
Always remember the importance of a well-informed (as opposed to ignorant or misinformed or DISinformed) electorate in a representative republic, especially one with far too many democratic elements.
“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”
*”including that which is submerged”–most folks go through life never even thinking that there are areas of knowledge that are important in their lives of which they remain lazily unaware, let alone that there are unknown unknown areas of knowledge that they aren’t even equipped to know that they lack knowledge in.
Now, I’ll confess that I know a lot of stuff. Most of it is of no practical value and only important because of the intellectual or aesthetic pleasure it makes possible for me to enjoy. Some is of practical use. Of areas of knowledge, I can claim competence in more than a few, mastery in a very, very, very few and only enough knowledge in a number of others to know I can get myself in trouble claiming or acting as though I possessed competency or mastery in those fields… and enough knowledge to be able to learn more fairly quickly, if needed or desired.
And I know of some areas of knowledge of which I can claim almost complete ignorance. I am aware, as well, that there are quite likely to be areas of knowledge that have great impact on my life–usually indirectly or I’d probably have some knowledge of them–of which I am completely unaware. Unknown unknowns.
Our political masters possess no such humility.
But then, neither do many any Mass Media Podpeople, many Academia Nut Fruitcakes and the great unwashed “Mass Man” flock of sheeple.
Since you’ve already clicked the “read more” link to get this far, I’ll give an example–unrelated to public policy; just emblematic in my mind of the POV and behavior of those insulted from truth by their adamant ignorance–from an area of competence (though scarcely mastery–I’d leave that designation to an uncle of mine who reads Koine as if it were the English he’s been reading since age 5) of how easily a half-educated (or less) person can make a hash of something that anyone who is willing to do their own homework would not.
On a discussion forum that’s open to such “half (or less) educated” folk, a pugnacious pseudo-feministo (yes, I used a pseudo masculine construction on purpose) made some throwaway comment about Pauline misogyny based on 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, usually translated as something like,
Let the women keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but let them subject themselves, just as the Law also says. And if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church
The problem starts with the half-educated’s attitudes and fundamental assumptions, of course. Bringing an agenda to a text and then reading one’s agenda into the text (or even simply bringing one’s assumptions and an uncritical regard and not reading WHAT IS THERE and not caring about context, audience, etc.) is how unscrupulous folk twist the Constitution into “saying” what it does not, for example. And that is part of what happened with the pseudo-feministo.
But more, his ignorance of the text itself was blatantly obvious to anyone who’d spent any time whatsoever becoming genuinely familiar with the text, its context (both situationally and immediately textually), its audience and its place in the rest of the particular author’s work.
A couple of small examples that impeach the faux-feministo’s viewpoint: “women” and “subject themselves” (often rendered “submit themselves”) in the text. The “women” (and “woman”) interpreted there, as it so often is, is simply wrong-headed. More properly, the word “gunaikos”** would be “wives” and “wife”. This has a very significant place, given the cultural context of 1st Century Corinth. The faux-feministo was either ignorant of the proper words and their importance to understanding the text or chose to ignore such knowledge.
[Long discussion of the significances would be necessary to either fill in the faux-feministo’s gaps of knowledge or ascertain that the faux-feministo had simply relied on others being unaware of the information in order to make an illegitimate argument… ]
And then there’s the “submission” bit. *sigh* Leave out the fact that this was just a brief blurb about not interrupting worship with a bunch of questions better addressed elsewhere (lots of cultural things there, too–and not necessarily what the faux-feministo would like to have them be). The word translated as the phrase, “let them subject themselves” (yes, one word in Koine frequently needs a whole phrase to interpret into English. So? It’s no different from many other languages, many even closer to English than Koine).
(*heh* I thought that would be a bit easier than transliterating it as “hupotassesthosan” ;-))
It’s in a middle form that doesn’t have a ready translation in English but which indicates an entirely voluntary act of submission. It’s not a Pauline command to women to sit down, shut up and not be heard but a plea of order both in gatherings for worship and in the home and ought to be taken together with Pauline instructions for husbands and wives to submit to each other mutually, to respect each other and to have good manners in public.
Of course, none of that is acceptable to faux feminists or any stripe anyway, so I suppose arguing for accuracy–or even literacy–in addressing such concerns is silly.
But, you see, that’s a reason I chose this seemingly esoteric example. It illustrates that ignorance–either unwitting or deliberate–leads to error, and when someone is ignorant AND assumes that they know more than they do, then that will insulate them from any facts adverse to their partial (or even flat-out wrong) knowledge.
You’ve seen this just recently in the public arena many times, no doubt. One recent example could be the excoriation Rick Perry (of whom I’m no major fan) underwent for saying the anthropogenic climate scare-ism cultists’ “consensus” acts like toward scientists who demur much as the “scientific consensus” of Galileo’s day treated him. That Perry was historically and contemporaneously correct mattered to his detractors not one whit more than it mattered when Sarah Palin was more historically literate in her comments about Paul Revere than her detractors were in their inane ridicule of her (historically accurate) remarks.
Or the multiplicity of police departments who persecute citizens for engaging in LEGAL acts. These police departments know their persecutions are illegal but pretend ignorance (or, in some cases are even worse: truly ignorant of the law OR act under cover of clearly, judicially determined, ILLEGAL statutes–the linked circumstance resulted in an Illinois law used to persecute a videotaper of police in public performance–misperformance–of their duties being slapped down).
And it’s not as if any of the information such folks ignore or ridicule is all that esoteric or unavailable in the age of Google, but that they can’t handle the truth.
Or more rightly, facts don’t fit their narrative and agenda.
And so we have public policy influenced and enacted and enforced by people who are both unwittingly ignorant and deliberately ignorant (in active denial) of germane facts because of arrogance, laziness or personal/political agendas.
**different forms in the different verses indicating only singular/plural–and since different readers might not have the correct fonts available, I’ve just transliterated one form.