UP THE STREAM W/O A PADDLE

I love it when an expert says the same thing I do. At least sometimes I do.

Yesterday, in The Study, I wrote

Conclusion: our democracy is at once well-intentioned and largely literate but also quite w/o the slightest clue as to what is really going on in today’s key areas of concern, culturally, nationally, internationally, etc.

Today, a New York Times book review reports that Susan Jacoby, in her book The Age of American Unreason, declares that

Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.

Check out the review via the link below. It is a stunner.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14dumb.html?pagewanted=print

The pity of it is that so many of us think we know so much and are ever so much more intelligent than our forebears.

I am reminded of the cellphone commercial wherein the caller assumes that having a new cellphone will make his calls more successful.

Nope. Not so.

We are adrift in a sea of data. Without a compass.

Or, as the old saying goes, we are up the stream w/o a paddle. The stuff is flowing by and too many of us do not know what to do with it.