The Insanity of Literacy

“Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad”
-- George Barnard Shaw

The uninformed person is often derided in our public debate. His statements are dismissed as fundamentally flawed because of some lack of mention of a tidbit seen by his detractor. His failure to keep afloat in the maelstrom of news, facts, and rumors seemingly proves his ineligibility to hold worthy opinions.

Nearly everybody falls into this category of incomplete knowledge. The more one reads, the more likely the next item read will cancel out something previously learned. We quickly fall into the habit of selective reading (and listening) of those things that support rather than clash with our worldview. It is comfortable, even when our particular outlook is gloom and doom.

Should we pity the Renaissance Man who would quest to be all-knowing rather than attempt to emulate him? Would not such a man be overcome in his inability to comprehend amidst the myriad of equally emphatically stated observations which diametrically oppose each other? Or perhaps even more so by those which share common ground before veering off in different directions.

Let’s, instead, see the genius of the simple-minded. Admiration is due for the streamlining of the decision process that seeks to borrow and repeat the opinions heard elsewhere as a ready substitute for the ponderous assembly and evaluation of raw (and often incomplete) facts. Not only does it conserve energies for our more entertaining and/or profitable activities, but it also lowers our sense of personal responsibility for the opinions we espouse in public as we redirect criticism towards those remote borrowed sources.