You Can Lead a Human to Knowledge, But You Can't Make It Think

i·con·o·clasm
īˈkänəˌklazəm/
noun

1. the action of attacking or assertively rejecting cherished beliefs and institutions or established values and practices.

2. the rejection or destruction of religious images as heretical; the doctrine of iconoclasts.

I am going to talk about the first of these definitions and how the last hundred years of progress has been anything but progress. The Internet was initially hailed as the savior of freedom and Democracy by bringing truth to the entire World. But has it, really?

When I was growing up there were very few people who had television sets, somewhat more that had radios, but we all had access to newspapers and magazines. Our primary source for news of the world and events was of course, those newspapers and magazines. The seventies had not yet arrived and therefore the revolution in advertising that permitted the rise of manipulation of the masses had not yet occurred. Still, we had bad journalism.

We had a name for this journalism, it was called "Yellow Journalism" a pejorative term for certain and one that would not be permitted in today's uber politically correct world. The institution persists to this day though no one dares call it that.

Frank Luther Mott defines yellow journalism in terms of five characteristics:

1. scare headlines in huge print, often of minor news
2. lavish use of pictures, or imaginary drawings
3. use of faked interviews, misleading headlines, pseudoscience, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts
4. emphasis on full-color Sunday supplements, usually with comic strips
5. dramatic sympathy with the "underdog" against the system.

Sound familiar? It should, because these five characteristics apply to almost every single post on social media. We once believed that the Internet, by simply bringing information to those who did not have it, would solve the World's problems. “Informed reason, according to Plato, is the faculty best suited to make all the right and necessary decisions in a person’s life. “Unfortunately, Plato ran smack into another platitude:

“ You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. “

The Internet has indeed provided vastly improve access to information, but it has done nothing to expand upon the human capacity to reason, in fact, it almost seems to have had the exact opposite effect.

Rather than enabling iconoclasm by providing access to multiple viewpoints and ideas, it has resulted in an entrenchment due mostly to human nature. Instead of expanding our horizons with new ideas, we have instead focused ever more narrowly on our cherished beliefs, picking and choosing from an ever more vast sea of “information”; much of it of dubious value, to support and defend our cherished beliefs, institutions, values and practices.

We post on a social media site and someone of opposite viewpoint posts back. Do we listen? Do we objectively consider the validity of his or her arguments? No, we do not, we delete the offending post and ban the author from our sight forever more. We use our new found access to build ever larger walled gardens around our beliefs admitting of no disagreement with our cherished point of view. Only those who agree with us and hold the same beliefs we do are permitted within our garden and woe be unto the unbeliever who dares to intrude.

Instead of a spirited discourse, an exchange of ideas espoused by Plato, we instead become ever more intractable, ever more entrenched in our ways, defending dogma behind a wall of refusal to think.

“You can lead a human to knowledge, but you can't make it think. “

Bullshit

Jon Stewart is riding off into the sunset, but before he left he gave us one final salvo of his famous wit. Uncharacteristically, this was an even handed attack and picked no sides, nor did it pull any punches. Short form: if it looks like bullshit, smells like bullshit and sounds like bullshit, it is probably bullshit. Here it is once more for your enjoyment.

"Bullshit is everywhere.

There is very little that you will encounter in life that has not been in some way infused with bullshit.

Not all of it bad; your general, day-to-day, organic free-range bullshit is often necessary, or at the very least innocuous. "Oh, what a beautiful baby! I'm sure it'll grow into that... head." That kind of bullshit in many ways provides important social contract fertilizer, and keeps people from making each other cry all day.

But then there's the more pernicious bullshit: your premeditated, institutional bullshit, designed to obscure and distract. Designed by whom? The bullshitocracy. It comes in three basic flavors.

One, making bad things sound like good things. "Organic, all-natural cupcakes." Because "factory-made sugar-oatmeal balls" doesn't sell. "PATRIOT Act." Because "are you scared enough to let me look at all your phone records act" doesn't sell. So whenever something's been titled "Freedom-Family-Fairness-Health-America," take a good long sniff. Chances are, it's been manufactured in a facility that may contain traces of bullshit.

Number two: hiding the bad things under mountains of bullshit. Complexity. "You know, I would love to download Drizzy's latest Meek Mill diss," (everyone promised me that made sense) "but I'm not really interested right now in reading Tolstoy's iTunes agreement. So I'll just click 'Agree.' Even if it grants Apple prima noctae with my spouse."

Here's another one: simply put, banks shouldn't be able to bet your pension money on red. Bullshitly put: it's -- hey! this! Dodd-Frank. Hey, a handful of billionaires can't buy our elections, right? Of course not. They can only pour unlimited anonymous cash into a 501(c)(4) if 50% is devoted to issue education. Otherwise, they'd have to 501(c)(6) it, or funnel it openly through a non-campaign-coordinating SuperPAC, with a coordinating.... [stage whisper I think they're asleep now. We can sneak out.]

And finally, it's the Bullshit of Infinite Possibility. These bullshitters cover their unwillingness to act under the cover of unending inquiry. "We can't do anything, because we don't yet know everything! We cannot yet take action on climate change, until everyone in the world agrees gay marriage vaccines won't cause our children to marry goats who are gonna come for our guns. Until then, I say, teach the controversy!"

Now, the good news is this: Bullshitters have gotten pretty lazy, and their work is easily detected. And looking for it is kind of a pleasant way to pass the time. Like an I Spy of Bullshit. 

So I say to you, friends: The best defense against bullshit is vigilance. So if you smell something, say something."

My kind of speech.