In my first philosophy class in college our professor, on the first day, asked us if two parallel lines intersect. She went around the room asking people, and we all said 'no' or 'probably'. The entire room was basically uniform as she explained that scientists and mathematicians have suggested that, somewhere off in space, parallel lines intersect. This is within the model of believing the universe and space come to a point instead of infinitely sprawled out like a college student after finals. Our professor explained the point of bringing this up was to draw our attention to the idea that what we have learned may not be as concrete as we believe it to be. So as to say, so many of us learn that Christopher Columbus sailed 'the ocean blue' in 1492 and landed in America. It wasn't until much later that we find out he hadn't; his trek concluded in the Caribbean. This is just one example of an item we're taught and supposed to blindly believe.
The problem here is that we all believe that what we 'learn', what is told to us is 'factual' when, in fact, these things are in a constant state of flux. Unless we believe that parallel lines didn't used to intersect but now do based on some change in the space/time continuum or whatever Star Trek quoting you're willing to pull out. The only things that remain constant, in my humble opinion, are the Words of God. Those Words don’t change, they evolve, laws adjust to accommodate human progression; but at no point do or will God’s Words come into question as the difference what ‘might be’ and what ‘is’. What we’re looking at is a vast and infinite continuum of opinions.
We have people spouting jargonistic thoughts and ideas that don’t really retain shape as our lives progress. If someone says, “Toyota’s are the best cars on the planet,” people are going to assume that the person is speaking from personal opinion; however, if someone says, “the berlin wall came down in 1989, (thank you Jeremy)” which is something regarded by many as a fact, we’d never think that what they’re proposing is their opinion or a thought created of experience or perspective.
The credence given here is that one person knows more than another about the subject that they are speaking about when, generally, people are simply relaying the information collected by someone else who is speaking from “experience”. There’s a book written by John Hodgman – You can see him on the Daily Show from time to time, but more regularly as the ‘PC’ in the Apple commercials – called The Areas of My Expertise about the idea that by simply saying you’re an expert people will assume that you are in spite of knowing very little, or anything at all, about the subject you’ll be talking about or representing. It’s an act that people have been using for years with great success: making crap up to sound important. Generally, these people know something or think they know something and go on television shows or are quoted in magazines or newspapers just plain speaking and making what they say sound real. And it is real, to them, but it may not be real to everyone else. When a teenager is asked a general question, as the sample of the population of teenagers, people accept their answers as facts across the board. There’s one answer given, one perspective looked at and the mass of people are clumped in with them. A man wearing a green shirt says it doesn’t look good on him yields people thinking that people in green shirts don’t think the color looks good on them. Sounds like a completely insane belief but the evidence exists to say that things like this happen, somewhere, sometime.
With this idea firmly plunged into our cortex we can understand how insane it is that we unquestionably believe one another. Now, I’m not saying that human beings are gullible or actually believe what is said by some stranger they’ve never met, but these situations exist. I’ve experienced them and therefore I, personally, can say that in my experience people do, somewhere and sometime, blindly accept everything that is spouted from the mouths of “experts” or friends or co-workers etc. But then again, that’s me, and I really don’t know much, if anything about anything. I just have a few ideas.
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