Knowledge – v – Information

 

 

We live in an information age apparently; everything about everything is available literally at the tips of our fingertips. Yet – we know very little about anything worthwhile.

Let me try to explain.

Information is merely the flat shallow recitation of what is or isn’t as the case may be, knowledge is a multilayered, multifaceted deep understanding of why and how something is or isn’t.

Information can be manipulated, manufactured, corrupted and twisted to suit a particular purpose – knowledge requires looking beyond information, dissecting information, peeling back layers of information to reveal the source and motivation of the giver or disseminator of that information.

Information merely requires the passive acceptance of this flat, hollow and carefully constructed edifice of “facts” “theories” and “analysis” knowledge demands a more proactive challenge to this “information” acquiring knowledge means being willing to look beyond the surface and question so called “truths” or “facts”. Acquiring knowledge means being willing to discard information, reject the validity of information, including information upon which one has built one’s external place in the vast sea of humanity and the internal psychological scaffolding we have constructed to allow us to navigate and filter all the information, both sensory and otherwise that bombards us continually.

Setting our internal filters to accept only those pieces of information that maintain this internal psychological scaffolding in place allows us to sail through our lives without ever having to challenge ourselves, make ourselves uncomfortable or question the very basis upon which we anchor ourselves in the here and now.

Knowledge requires an inner journey fraught with peril to our carefully constructed psychological scaffolding – information allows us to coast through life, both external and internal, without questioning the journey, the destination or the means of travel.

I have been pondering on several clichés that seem to have acquired deep purchase into the zeitgeist and are expounded with monotonous regularity. One of which is that “life is complicated” bizarrely pointing to the technological advances and hyper technology within which modern societies conduct the business of human interaction. As if, the more “hi-tech” a society is, it follows that this society is also extremely complex and “advanced”

Actually “modern” society is savage, superficial, tawdry and shallow – the driving impetus behind the vast majority of “modern” societies is greed, selfishness, vanity and egotism – hardly what one would call “advanced” not from a human evolution perspective that is.

Look around you – what do you see?

A world of mass consumerism, a vast sea of humanity almost permanently attached to some piece of “technology” that most have no clue about how it works (including me by the way) waves of “information” pouring out from this “technology” and embedded in all this “information” carefully crafted “messages” designed to mould and steer the consumers of all this “information” in a certain way – passively.

Let’s just take a moment to reflect on something rather bizarre – 100 years ago – not actually that significant an amount of time historically speaking, human beings, despite the more environmentally perilous nature of society were actually healthier. Mentally and physically.

Yes, I know – infant mortality was high, life span was shorter and life was tougher – I am not disputing that in western societies infant mortality has plummeted and life span has grown longer – nor am I disputing that living has become less an exercise in survival and more an exercise in staving off boredom – for some.

Now, compare the technological advances to the actual state of humanity.

100 years ago people were striving to improve not just their physical environment but their intellectual environment – there was a seething desire to know – to understand – to learn.

Today? Hmmmm.

When the doings of an intellectually challenged nitwit “celebrity” invariably female, dominate all sources and avenues of “information” and the hysterics of yet another coven of brain dead females about the shirt a scientist who has just achieved an amazing technological feat is wearing is deemed of more importance than said scientists achievement – then you know – you must know that humanity has been and is not evolving – but de-evolving.

Let’s go back to the original premise of this piece for a moment – the difference between knowledge and information.

All of the great thinkers of humanity have invariably been male – note to feminists – shut up whining and pay attention.

As I said – all the great thinkers of humanity have been male – from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas to Emile Durkheim and Emmanuel Kant – and they addressed that eternal question – to paraphrase – the meaning and purpose of life (yes – I know it’s more complicated than that) in effect the big questions.

But – before they did, they spent many years in study and reflection and contemplation – they spent time thinking, acquiring and testing information to achieve knowledge.

What is significant to note is that, not only the ones I mentioned above but many many more produced what are referred to as seminal works – the distillation of the knowledge they had strived to acquire. Invariably one or two works of such significance that the content is still being discussed today.

Time to mention feminism (did you all think I’d forgotten about the toxic influence of feminism?)

If there is one thing that distinguishes feminism from all if not most “theories” or “belief systems” it is the sheer volume, the unending deluge, the unabated outpourings of unadulterated crap that feminism has produced. A positive avalanche of ……………………verbal diarrhoea, and it never stops, does it?

And all of it on one singular topic – being female. A biological accident of birth over which no-one has any control. One is either born male or female and that is out of the hands of either of the two human beings who contributed the genetic material to create this new human being.

But – before we get off track – the question to be asked is – why the need for such a deluge of “information”? Why the need to keep regurgitating and spewing out the same “information” over and over and over again?

Simples. To hide the paucity of knowledge and insight into the human condition in this deluge of “information” to disguise the shallowness and superficiality of feminist “theories” and of course to deaden and neutralise any desire to question all of this crap by its sheer weight and constant and interminable repetition.

There is of course another agenda in operation – for almost six decades the western world has been inundated with this crap (feminism) in order to deflect attention away from another agenda – the neo-liberal agenda to consolidate and bring under the control of global entities all the worlds resources, including controlling the flow of all this “information”

Feminism is and was the perfect vehicle through which to exert this covert social, political and cultural control – because if there one thing feminism is good at, in fact is excellent at – it is spreading stupidity, passivity, damping down intellectual curiosity, numbing the desire for knowledge, narrowing the psychological filters of a human being to such an extent, that only the carefully constructed “messages” get through.

It sounds like feminism is a bigger player in all this than it really is – yes and no – feminism is merely the mask, the vehicle, the delivery system – but it did harness, corrupt and twist deep seated impulses embedded within human beings in order to find purchase in the cultural and political frameworks of western societies.

Sounds like it’s all over for humanity doesn’t it?

No, it isn’t. Human beings are naturally endowed with curiosity, with a desire to know – why? How? Human beings are also naturally endowed with an inbuilt bullshit meter – you can deaden it, you can trick it, you can even turn it off in some people – where they will in effect literally believe anything – and I mean anything – you tell them.

But – as someone once said:

“You can fool some of the people, some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time”

The second thing to note is this – I believe that human beings also have a deep-seated desire to move forward, to improve, to harness and understand the positive and find ways to defeat and diminish the negative – be it poverty, hopelessness, despair – but above and beyond all that, human beings have an almost visceral need and desire to be part of a community of human beings.

Both feminism and neo-liberalism working in concert have elevated the cult of the individual and the cult of selfishness and self-absorption to epic levels.

Neo-liberalism emphasises and lauds the separation and disconnectedness of human beings – the dog eat dog mentality – and feminism emphasises the inward looking, egotistical, shallow and vapid female-centric world view that creates an imbalance, a toxic fracture in human relationships, solidifying and entrenching the neo-liberal agenda – it has become a vicious circle.

Yet – both these agendas emanate from a small elite of persons exercising social, cultural and political control over a larger majority upon whom this control rests.

The thing is – the vast majority of people are actually “not like that” selfish, avaricious, egotistical, shallow and mercenary.

Now – don’t get me wrong – yes indeed huge numbers of people exhibit those kinds of behaviours, and particularly some women, those behaviours have been assiduously encouraged and cultivated, nor am I excusing or justifying those behaviours – but – it goes against the grain for some of them – they are acting out their social conditioning – following their programming – consciously and deliberately to be sure.

What is feeding this behaviour, what is creating the conditions, the societal and cultural conditions that allow this behaviour to prevail is a manifestation of the deliberate and conscious fracturing of the bridge between information and knowledge.

Acres and acres of information filling up every corner of the human psyche in a never-ending stream, layers and layers of data, of “facts” of “slogans” of “theories” of “messages” with no pause.

Ask yourselves – is there any time during the course of your day when you are not being bombarded with “information”? TV, Radio, Internet, iphone, magazines, newspapers, you name it.

I personally don’t watch television or listen to the radio, except in the car – I use the internet to access only a few things, mostly for research but I do have some sites and blogs that I visit regularly – I don’t use facebook or twitter and I certainly don’t feel deprived or starved for “information”

As far as I can see – most of the “information” out there is complete unadulterated crap, and I have zero interest in it.

With regard to feminism – this last year has seen a definite and accelerating souring of attitudes to feminism and feminists, and because of the innate stupidity of the vast majority of feminists they have countered this turning away by becoming even more toxic and insane (if that was even possible)

My personal feeling is that the conversation has moved on – humanity is moving on – or at least is struggling to do so – the tactics of feminism merely indicates a frantic desire to pull everybody backwards – to drag the conversation back down into the cesspit of feminist control.

With regard to the neo-liberal agenda, the other side of the toxic social control coin – this is actually being thrown into stark relief here in the Republic of Ireland – we are literally trapped in the grip of this agenda in an unrelenting and vicious cycle.

But – they have gone too far here – they have awakened a sleeping beast – every day more and more people are waking up and rejecting the programming – all the programming – including feminism – over the last couple of months I have met and spoken to one feminist – every other female I have spoken to has vehemently rejected feminism – in quite trenchant language I might add J

What is very significant is that alongside this awakening is a renewed enthusiasm for knowledge, for understanding, and for putting into context raw information, rather than simply accepting and internalising this “information” undigested, unquestioned and unchallenged.

Because of its intertwined relationship with the neo-liberal global agenda feminism is also coming under more intense scrutiny – a process that began to gather momentum with the advent of the internet and is now unstoppable.

If I had one wish it would be this – disengage from the trivial, unplug yourselves from the never ending conduit of asinine and pointless “information” streams – including endless TV and create space, time and silence for the acquisition of knowledge and understanding.

You don’t have to know every tiny inconsequential detail of every tiny inconsequential event that happens in the world, but if you allow yourself to think, to challenge yourself then you can begin to see that most of frenetic activity around you is pointless and is merely a ploy to engage you in said activities to distract you from the broader picture then from there you will see the patterns of control emerging from the shadows – if you can see it – you can begin to disengage from it.

 

Slainte