03-09-2017, 12:29 PM
(03-08-2017, 09:11 PM)Odin Wrote: Great article I ran into in The Atlantic: Trump Has Caused a Civic Surge in America
Quote:... The surge will likely outlast his presidency. Americans today are rushing to make up for decades of atrophy and neglect in civic education and engagement. But as they do so it’s important to remember that citizenship is about more than know-how. It’s also about “know-why”—the moral purposes of self-government...
And this is the crux of the issue. The populace is no longer mediated by a self-assigned coterie of gatekeepers, so the information comes directly to each of us without the benefit of analysis or even basic fact checking. Some of us will take the time to fact check, and some from that group will go further and do the research to understand the information. The rest will operate on emotion and instinct. That may work eventually, but the process of getting there will certainly be messy or even dangerous. Let's hope it isn't existential.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.