Saturday, September 25, 2004
'... in order to have an opinion about things, one first has to have knowledge of them.' Discuss.
I plucked that from someone else's blog. The quote, I mean, not the GP tack-on. It was keeping me awake, so here I am again at 2.30am. I agree that opinion without knowledge is just a lot of uninformed ranting (either that or we can call it abstract philosophy... yes, I'm just a simple girl) - much akin to trying to dig a tunnel through silt without steel and concrete supports. But, as we all know, the accumulation of knowledge alone can never be a substitute for independent thinking. Knowledge may lead to dogma and stifle thought. We educate ourselves in the hope of achieving intellectual nirvana, but the intellectually-passive tend to lapse into the bad habit of merely simulating the opinions of others. If we read unthinkingly, simply allowing the information to diffuse down the concentration gradient, we don't learn, we're not improved in any way, and in fact, we may be better off reading less and thinking more.
This is all old hat, dead-horse-flogging stuff... and I've known it all along. Together with this knowledge lies the realisation that I haven't got a real, original opinion worth a damn. I've been too busy filling my short-term memory with all sorts of nonsense and conveniently skirting the more important issues. I fear that I may be falling into the habit of living life on autopilot: comfortable only with routine, shying away from challenges, away from the painful process of actually having to
think for myself. And that's worrying.
Oh, and what began as a mildly philosophical inquiry has degenerated into a whinge-and-whine session. Why are we not surprised.
words were spilled on Saturday, September 25, 2004
