Second Negative

People of Earth

I read an interview a few years ago where Bill Gates said that one of the things he learned in college was that there were a lot of people smarter than him. And though there are plenty of people you meet in school that aren’t very smart at all, he was right. It’s a lesson that applies to your entire life. I think most of us come to appreciate different people and what they know because we realize that we don’t know everything. There are people out there that know how to do all sorts of things, and most of those things have value that we don’t really understand. This routinely occurs to me while watching Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel.

I read an article last week in the New York Times that reported 1 in 5 Americans believe the sun revolves around the Earth. Hmm…I thought, who are these people? Bush voters? Kentuckians? Texas Longhorn fans? But no, they’re probably just regular people. You might even know a few of them. After thinking about it for a while, it occurred to me that they probably don’t especially stand out in day to day life. As crazy as it might sound, they probably just don’t know anything about the solar system, or the Earth, or how it all works. Yes, it’s common knowledge to most of us. But that can be difficult to define.

Just like you people (of course), I’m able to hold two opposing views in my head at the same time. I know what I believe. And if I’m arguing about something, I usually know what you believe too. For instance, I can’t stand Rush Limbaugh, but I’ve read two of his books. Bible thumpers make me crazy but I’ve read the entire Old Testament (Leviticus Rules!) and various books of the New Testament. I’m willing to consider anything. I love Richard Dawkins, but I lean more towards the Clockmaker hypothesis for my own stupid reasons.

It’s easy to categorize people as smart or dumb based on your interactions with them, but I think most of the time it’s simply a lack of information. Ignorance, if you will. This lack of information is typically compounded by the belief that it doesn’t exist. I sometimes talk to people about politics, who tell me that they don’t like a certain person, or they believe a certain thing, but when questioned about it, they can’t give any reason they think that way. I think most of the time they’ve been led to believe they’re supposed to think a certain way, and so they do, but they don’t really know why. Plenty of people take the attitude that they know all they need to know already, and so they shut down. That kind of thing leads people to routinely vote against their own self interest. It also leads to people who believe the sun revolves around the Earth.