Smartness only works on our behalf if it is tempered by knowledge and the ability to understand that knowledge and keep it in proper context….

Smartness only works on our behalf if it is tempered by knowledge and the ability to understand that knowledge and keep it in proper context. That is largely not happening today. In today’s world, most discourse is based on ignorance. And that’s a really big problem.

You know, there’s been a bit of a rumble in our North American societies to provide young people with free tuition for post-secondary studies, and I must admit that I’m firmly on board with this….several European countries are already doing this and I’d be willing to bet it’s working out really well. In fact, I feel there’s a specific type of post-secondary education that everyone in society who is able should be required to attend. And I feel that’s about two years – or four semesters – of something that used to be called a “liberal arts education”. I think something like this would greatly improve the public discourse and the public wellness.

Now before all you folks start saying that higher education doesn’t necessarily make you smarter, you should know I agree with that. However, I also feel that it can help you become something we’ve taken to calling a “critical thinker” – and that is something that is vitally and crucially important in the year 2021 when there are copious amounts of serious crap floating around in the mainstream of our information flow. You’ve simply gotta be able to sort through the vast amount of information you’re presented with every minute of every day and you’ve gotta be able to make some type of reasoned response to it. I think most folks are seriously overmatched and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff they are faced with each day.

My liberal arts education would include stuff like politics, history, philosophy, government, sociology, how our societies work and what makes them go….that type of stuff. And I really think if most people had even a basic understanding of the how and the why of things, we’d be in for a smoother ride as we pass along through life’s journey. The way it’s going now, most folks are arguing about things without actually realizing how things work or why they work that way.

I’ll give you an example. I learned this in history class at the University of Guelph. U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in the heart of the Great Depression. He was faced with massive economic dislocation, unemployment, poverty and just a really big mess – the world economy had basically collapsed. He realized very quickly that there was only one way to get things going again – he’d have to tax the beejeezus out of the rich folks in America and force them to get the economy going. So, he did. He really went after them and he used the money he got to fund something called the “New Deal”, which was basically a bunch of huge make-work projects and whole bunch of social programs that put the country back to work and helped lift people out of poverty.

The reason I’m writing about this is if I hadn’t read about this and gathered information about it from reliable historical sources, so that I was able to properly understand it, I might be one of the many, many people – mostly on the right of the political spectrum – who believe that you can’t “tax” the rich or wealthy corporations because it somehow hurts society. It cleary does not hurt society, and, in fact, can be responsible for huge good. And there are indeed rich folks who do some of the sharing the wealth stuff by carrying out noble and philanthropic work on behalf of humanity – I’m not suggesting they don’t. But rich folks clearly are not sharing enough of their wealth when we see the vast amount of opulence, decadence and wealth-driven grotesqueness that exists in our world – while so many others are living miserable, poverty-stricken lives and literally grasping and clutching with every small bit of their being just to survive and eke out one more day of life upon the planet.

No, there must be some semblance of equity in today’s world. Maybe at some point in the distant past, there was a need to acquire vast quantities of wealth for some reason, but those times have passed. At one time, we were a bunch of scattered societies operating sort of independently on the planet. And the world was a seriously dangerous and brutal place. It’s the same today, but doesn’t need to be. We have the capacity to fix things. We are smart. But that smartness only works on our behalf if it is tempered by knowledge and the ability to understand that knowledge and keep it in proper context. That is largely not happening today. In today’s world, most discourse is based on ignorance. And that’s a really big problem.