Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Confidence out of ignorance is not to be admired (#3077)

     I have met too many souls who were brimming with confidence, so much so that others around them were awestruck and doe eyed. Confidence in and of itself can be intoxicating. Behind it is an assumption that the confidence is well placed. That whatever gave the person the confidence was an insight that had to be purely amazing. Well most of us know better. The only thing confidence means to me today is that there needs to be some explaining. I know that some of us are confident in how we approach life and how things could be if only... but that isn't what I am talking about. I am talking about the confidence that somehow we know more than others without having done the due diligence of mastering the logical sequence.
     Too many seem to think that their limited knowledge is somehow superior to those whose knowledge is vastly superior. We have a man like Stephen Hawking who is warning about the effect that denying climate change can have on our Earth, http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/hawking-says-trumps-climate-stance-could-damage-earth/ar-BBDGD7l, yet those with little more intelligence than a rock seem to think that they know better. Arguably the smartest man alive or the guy next door who thinks that climate change is a hoax. You decide! This is what has happened to our society on whole. Where intelligence is dismissed in favor of the ignorant. If I choose to be intelligent I am using the tools of science and laws of logic to learn and understand. If I choose to be ignorant, I am using my own perceptions and biases to decide what is truth and fact and what isn't. I personally would always choose the scientific/logical method over the uneducated one but it seems that I am not in the largest group of company.
     America is not an intellectual nation anymore it is an ignorant one. We have misplaced our humility and have instead taken up arrogance. In that arrogance we feel like we naturally know more than others because we are somehow special. We are living off the glory of our forefathers/mothers and like the spoiled children we are, we even elected one president, we dismiss those who are challenging our insipidly held beliefs. There is a rot in our nation and it has risen to the top. Will we survive this in America? The answer is still in doubt. Most of us don't even realize how utterly foolish we are being and if we cannot even see what we are how are we going to change it?

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