Knowledge
Marc Friedlander


As for me, all I know is that I know nothing - Socrates


All anybody knows, or think that they know, are only recollections of words that others have said to them. Even if they learned a thing in school, read it in a book, googled it, have a PhD, heard it from God, or verified it for themselves with a stopwatch, sextant, and a compass - they are still relying on assumptions, operating with incomplete information, and basing their convictions on a shaky foundation of ideas and opinions of others, who were themselves standing on quicksand, not granite.
How do we really know with any certainty that the sun always rises in the East? Every child KNOWS this. You can verify it for yourself with a compass. A compass always points to the North. (DOES a compass always point North)? Of course it does! (really?) Okay - WHAT is NORTH? Well, it’s the opposite of SOUTH. It's the direction of the North Pole - right? What is the North Pole, then? Why, it is the most northern point on the globe. It’s the pole opposite the South Pole. Everybody KNOWS that.
None of us really knows Jack Shit, now do we.
Once we decide we really know something, and especially if we've known it for a long time, we become defensive about challenges to that knowledge and dismissive about contradictions to our knowledge.

I KNOW this to be a FACT, and YOU are wrong! If YOU were reasonable and open minded, and YOU would just LISTEN to ME, I could PROVE it to you and then YOU would KNOW that I am RIGHT!!!!!


This is how wars get started.