Knowledge of Knowledges, for Pity's Sake

Having read Peter Drucker’s 1993 book “Post-Capitalist Society” over the past few weeks, I have to say this is the most important “take-away” I discovered:

[W]hat we do need -- and what will define the educated person in the knowledge society -- is the ability to understand the various knowledges. What is each one about? What is it trying to do? What are its central concerns and theories? What major new insights has it produced? What are its important areas of ignorance, its problems, its challenges?

Without such understanding, the knowledges themselves will become sterile, will indeed cease to be "knowledges." They will become intellectually arrogant and unproductive. For the major new insights in every one of the specialized knowledges arise out of another, separate specialty, out of another one of the knowledges.

Thankfully, Drucker speaks of this “knowledge of other knowledges” concept not only in the context of economics and business management, but also in the realms of education and politics.

This lack of knowledge of other knowledges is what is crippling this country. Not arguments over whether Obama is right and Bush is the devil incarnate. Or vice versa. Unfortunately, we’re practicing what a commenter posted on a Time.com story about this weekend’s Glenn Beck rally in response to criticisms from the left on the intelligence of Beck, other rally speakers, and rally attendees:

I guess it’s ok to be stupid if it’s the right kind of stupid.

That kind of thinking, that kind of discourse, is going to get us nowhere. And it applies to the right as well as to the left, as well as to those who, like me, sag in the middle.

Want to understand why people attended Beck’s rally, why they like Sarah Palin, why they worry about religion being left out of our society? Get to know them personally. Not through the crap filters of the media, or the crap filters of your own moronic biases. Actually get to know them. Put aside preconceived notions and actually shut your damn mouth and listen to them. Try to understand where they’re coming from. Don’t react. Just listen. And think. You might learn something.

Want to understand why people are aghast at climate change deniers, why they like Barack Obama, why they worry about religion encroaching too much on society. I’ll repeat: Get to know them personally. Not through the crap filters of the media, or the crap filters of your own moronic biases. Actually get to know them. Put aside preconceived notions and actually shut your damn mouth and listen to them. Try to understand where they’re coming from. Don’t react. Just listen. And think. You might learn something.

Get off the I guess it’s ok to be stupid if it’s the right kind of stupid bandwagon. Right now.

I’m just sick of the smug from both sides of the spectrum.

I’m just sick of the lack of curiosity about what the other guy thinks and why he thinks that way. This applies to the left as well as the right. The left like to paint themselves as the right’s intellectual superiors. But the left is just as full of derp as is the right, because there are just as many on the left unwilling to understand the way their opposites think as there are similar thinkers on the right.