Not about educating anyone. It's more about expressing a pov. Besides, if I'm correct that education is what one does for one's self and schooling is what gets done to one, then "educating someone else" is maybe as fruitful as squaring circles.
The first of my prefatory remarks.
1. I recall in HS and even in college, people gloating over their perception of certain people's naivete - especially regarding sex, but also things like smoking, drugs, cursing, and so on. It's a mind-boggling thought, really, which we accept without comment that there are people - a great many people - who believe that their vast sexual experience gives them some special insight, if not into the inner workings of the cosmos, at least into the big wide world of "what adulthood means." The prevalence of this view was merely curious to me in HS, but absolutely shocking as I entered college and then sojourned, and finally left - with very little deviation from the norm till near the end. The shocking part is that there are still people well into their twenties who consider experience equal to knowledge or understanding.
2. A related idea is this silly notion that "with age comes wisdom." I've known some older people I thought were pretty wise. These were people I think were already pretty smart in their younger years. But I gotta say, that there are people who were really stupid in their youths who are even more stupid in their adulthood. It's a hopeful idea, but just silly.
3. I noticed in many cases in myriad discussions and arguments the claim made by one party that the other party exhibited "pure ignorance." In the majority of those cases I felt that the claimant had misdiagnosed the problem. In some cases, the problem really was ignorance, but in most, it seemed, the other party wasn't so much ignorant as willfully ignorant, perhaps even malicious (or so it seemed to me). In some cases, the object of rebuke did not appear to be particularly ignorant to me. People who use this sort of language to identify and dismiss the positions of their antagonists are also likely to mention how their mission is "merely to educate" them. Again, though, I assess that this is almost always a mischaracterization of their actions - which so far as I can tell is to humiliate the other person or "score points" as Pfranz and Vanguard have put it. A common assertion is that the ignorant person is "pathetic" and that the educator "feels sorry for them."
So far I'm speaking in general terms here. Sure these are things I've witnessed, but I have to think they are not uncommon observations.
4a. I notice also that some people approach a conversation the way evangelists approach my front door. In my view - and I think in most people's intuitive view - a conversation involves the exchange of ideas. But some people consider that the purpose of any conversation is to convince the listener that they're right. Of course I'm not suggesting - even remotely - that people should never disagree or that there is no room for debate or argument in conversation. Many of my most memorable conversations are of having been bested by a particularly knowledgeable over a casual coffee or a bloody game of chess. But an argument - a real argument is *STILL* an exchange of ideas. "Well, that's very interesting, but did you consider this." "...uh, well, no I wasn't even aware of that." But some faux conversationalists, exactly like that door-to-door religion salesman, don't give a rat's ass what their listener is saying or what the listener feels or, in fact, anything else the listener might have to offer other than complete rejection by the listener of his current view and the immediate, unwavering endorsement of the "conversationalist's" opinions. Knowing the truth - or being convinced of one's possession of The Truth - is more important than trying to discover it.
4b. In Broca's Brain, Sagan quotes Russell's Skeptical Essays (both of which books I highly recommend, btw): "William James used to preach the will to believe ... for my part I should wish to preach the will to doubt ... What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out - which is the exact opposite." I don't know that I agree with this exactly (and, in fact, I suspect he has misinterpreted James), but I do agree with the gist of it. I think there are a great many people who are more interested in defining the truth than they are in figuring out where it is. I don't know - maybe this is a natural tendency for all of us. I haven't figured that part out yet. (BTW, i'm kinda fond of a quote by James that "A great many people think they're thinking when they're merely rearranging their prejudices." even though I think that's a pretty accurate description of my own mental activity much of the time.)
I guess I don't want to type in any more at this point without getting a bit of back and forth on it. All of this and I haven't even gotten to the gist of why I think honest ignorance is nothing to be ashamed of.
k
