Great Asimov quote . . .

[markpkessinger]

[The Wielding Truth]

1. Very good. Asinov is one of my favorites. Thanks for the post.

[hfojvt]

2. not a very good quote

Last edited Sun Jan 22, 2012, 12:53 PM - Edit history (1)

I prefer another that I used as my signature line for a time.

"It is no man's right to have contempt for another, it is only a hard won privilege earned after long experience."


The problem with the quote you are using is that it tends to lead to instant contempt, just add water. "Aha, you don't know something I know, that makes you one of them - a Shark, a member of the cult of ignorance!" "Aha, you made an error, that makes you one of them - a Shark, a member of the cult of ignorance!"

And once someone has been found to be a Shark, they are a Shark for life, just like Jets are Jets for life. http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/122

[saras]

5. Everybody, even savants, are ignorant on most subjects

Very few people act as though their ability as surgeons is equal to that of those who practice regularly. Far too many people act as though their ability as politicians is equal to that of those who practice regularly.

Of course, if most of our surgeons were killing more people than they fixed, slashing up others at random in bar fights and unexplainable encounters in public restrooms, and throwing the bodies out the back windows of the hospital into the trucks of waiting confederates, followed by them pushing all the surgical tables, instrumentation, and cabinets full of equipment out to the same trucks, it might be a different matter.

[hobbit709]

8. My contempt is reserved for those that practice willful ignorance.

Not knowing is one thing. not wanting to know or denying the fact is a different story.

[hfojvt]

17. most of us don't want to know a lot of things

I don't know much about car repair, and that is willful ignorance. I deliberately do not spend time learning about car repair. I don't know that much about medicine or engineering either. Way back when I decided not to major in medicine or engineering. What can I say, I thought trains were 19th century technology.

As for denying the facts, here's another quote I like, but I modified

"Most people, given a choice between
a) changing their mind, and
b) proving that there is no need to do so
will get busy on the proof."

I think being stubborn is a very human trait.

And as for the facts, I cannot find the book now (it is somewhere in this house among the thousands of other books I own), but at one point in "Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot" Framlem writes something like, "One thing about liberals is that they are uncertain about issues, and it is not an uninformed uncertainty, it's one after watching two specials and reading a book and two articles."

It's a complicated world and it is pretty hard for one person, or one tribe to have a monopoly of "the facts".

Which is not to say that there is not a lot of ignorance, or worse yet, outright mis-information out there. But to me that is the thing, not so much the ignorance, but that most people have been inundated in "facts" that are really propaganda. Most people "know" that social security is not gonna be there when they retire, because seemingly "everybody" has been saying so for years.

[Motown_Johnny]

12. that is just wrong

his point was that knowledge is better than ignorance

It isn't an attack on anyone, it is an attack on the false equivalency which exists between those who don't bother to learn the truth (like FOX viewers) and those who do take the time and energy to learn what is actually real.

One person's ignorance is not as good as another person's knowledge and never will be.

For example:

"And once someone has been found to be a Shark, they are a Shark for life, just like Jets are Jets for life"

Wrong!

Tony had left the Jets, that is why Riff was in charge.



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055614/plotsummary

Westside story is the award winning adaptation of the classic romantic tragedy, Romeo and Juliette. The feuding families become two warring New York City gangs- the white Jets led by Riff and the Puerto Rican Sharks, led by Bernardo. Their hatred escalates to a point where neither can coexist with any form of understanding. But when Riff's best friend (and former Jet) Tony and Bernardo's younger sister Maria meet at a dance, no one can do anything to stop their love



As you can see, your ignorance of the characters and plot in "West Side Story" is not equal to my knowledge concerning that story. It doesn't mean that you are some type of ignorant fool, just that you are wrong on this one point (and should take the time to educate yourself before using such an example).

I don't hold you in contempt due to your ignorance and therefore your "just add water" supposition is incorrect.

[hfojvt]

16. that isn't what Riff said

Riff: [singing] When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way! from you first cigarette your last dyin' days.

Riff: Womb to tomb!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055614/quotes

Asimov's quote and its use here certainly is an attack on those who belong to a "cult". Meaning those in the other tribe, the other gang.

Actually ignorance is just as good as knowlegde, that is the point. Especially when people who have knowledge do not share their knowledge, but just label others as ignorant, or share their knowledge with a very large heaping of snarkish contempt.

Here's how ignorance can trump knowledge.

"Everybody can be great. Because everybody can serve.

You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.

You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love."


What is actually real? The Velveteen Rabbit is real, because it is loved. That's what's real.

[AlbertCat]

25. "Everybody can be great. Because everybody can serve.

Serve what... baloney for lunch?

To serve WELL, you need to know what you are doing. And therefore you need to NOT be ignorant of what to do to serve well.

" You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve."
No not to serve a tennis ball. But to serve well as an editor or writer and to communicate clearly, you do. (they all do in your quote)

"You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. "

You don't to serve as a housekeeper, but as a scientist you do.

Of course to serve a tennis ball well, you need to not be ignorant of tennis and how to play it. To serve well as a housekeeper, you need to not be ignorant of that subject.

"to serve" is a vague term in your feel good platitude.... a platitude engineered to make the ignorant proud of their ignorance by someone NOT ignorant of how to manipulate words and rhetoric.

Do you think "West Side Story" and "The Velveteen Rabbit" were created by people ignorant, and not knowledgeable about their disciplines?

[hfojvt]

26. I think when he said that,

Martin was not talking about paid service, but rather something like this.

"Our answer was to call hastily on our volunteers, who responded immediately. They started out by simply cruising the streets of Montgomery with no particular system. On Saturday the ministers agreed to go to their pulpits the following day and seek additional recruits. Again the response was tremendous. With the new additions, the number of cars swelled to about three hundred."

"Stride toward freedom" p. 76

to serve mankind is not all about cooking or rocket surgery or employment. Sometimes it is as simple as moving some boxes.

[patrice]

24. Agree.

[JI7]

3. and in November of that Year America would elect Ronald Reagan for President

wasn't this the debate with the "there you go again" ?

only recented i read Carter's Words which got that response. the media whores never play what Carter said before playing the "great" Reagan line.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. However, it was Reagan who relabelled ignorance as "common sense".

Republicans love "common". It's recognizing who they are.

[Peace Patriot]

10. What did Carter say?

Really, I don't remember it--and would like to know.

[JI7]

22. i can't find the text, someone on DU posted it before

but it had to do with cutting medicare

[Peace Patriot]

28. Thanks!

"There you go again!" trying to take care of our old folks and ill or disabled folks who would be out on the street but for Medicare. "There you go again!" seeking the common good! "There you go again!" supporting the very best "common good" program that U.S. democratic society has created since Social Security! "There you go again!" being a responsible leader and a man with a conscience!

The Reagan worship of the corporate media moguls always did make me sick. Knowing what Carter was talking about, when they took up this snide Reagan mantra, makes me even sicker. Scumbags! Reagan and the fawners over Reagan! The man supported the massacre of TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND Mayan villagers in Guatemala in addition to Reagan-supported slaughters in Nicaragua and Honduras. And the man was a traitor--bargaining with the Iranian hostage takers in order to delay the release of those U.S. hostages until after the Carter-Reagan election in 1980. That election was one of the sickest events in modern history, only topped by the (s)elections of Bush Jr & Cheney in 2000 and 2004.

We have much work to do, my friends, to smash these filthy, traitorous ikons of Transglobal Corporate Rule!

[Neoma]

4. Whoa, I'm used to seeing him with just the huge sideburns.

[malthaussen]

7. It's possible to be anti-intellectual without being pro-ignorance

I tend to agree with Bob Heinlein's character Manny, and seriously hate "dirty-word intellectuals." You know, the self-referential circle-jerk type whose main labor is searching the indexes of each other's books to see how often they are mentioned. PhDs are supposed to contribute to the sum of human knowledge, not spend all their time stroking one another and sneering at the rest of us. This is why the working class has become so disenchanted with the Eastern Intellectual set.

-- Mal

[tomp]

15. i don't think so.

intellectual snobbery is quite different from intellectualism.

in fact, intellectual snobbery is really no different from dumbass snobbery which is what asimaov was talking about.

if it's hard to understand, many people don't want to know about it, and in fact, will hate you for understanding it.

politicians hold back progress every day with this very notion.

[malthaussen]

27. Okay, reasonable distinction

It points to a different aspect of the problem, as well: intellectualism has been so tainted by intellectual snobbery that many people don't make the distinction. Not only does this tar all intellectuals with the same brush, but since there is no universally-understood standard to separate the true intellectual from the pretender, people like Newt can get a reputation for being intellectuals.

-- Mal

[Peace Patriot]

9. "...and there always has been." --a very important point

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States and there always has been." --from the OP

------------------

But never before has ignorance been treated as a virtue, as it is now, by the Corporate Media. Nor have we ever before had a private corporation (ES&S, which bought out Diebold and now has an 80% monopoly over U.S. voting machines, all run on 'TRADE SECRET' code with virtually no audit/recount controls) (s)electing ignoramuses and stupidity-cultists for public office.

That is the difference between now and previous episodes of "the cult of ignorance." The powers-that-be have never before promoted ignorance. Indeed, you could say that the history of the United States has been written in the history of education in the United States--ever expanding, ever improving over our two hundred year history...until now. Now education is under all-out assault, in particular a financial assault on public education--while the rich cart off billions of dollars to tax havens and the country sinks under budgets for corporate resource wars and trillion dollar bankster bailouts--and including assaults on the substance of science education, on secular and liberal education, on teacher tenure and professionalism and on the independence of the academic sphere as a realm for truly free thought. And all of this--this whole ignorance agenda--is promoted by the Corporate Media in the interest of transglobal corporations and war profiteers.

It is appalling. Before--throughout our history--we have always had ignorant people, here and there--and pockets of ignorance, as well as assholes who exploited the ignorant--but the forces of enlightenment were constantly gaining ground, and whatever elites we had, in various periods in the past, generally approved of and supported more access to education, in the public and private school systems as well as in support of public libraries, public museums, public and private research institutes/agencies and numerous projects to improve the learning and knowledge base of our population. Now the elites are just looting us and couldn't care less about maintaining an educated population, and, are, indeed, hostile to it.

This is a sea change in our culture. And, believe me, it is deliberate on the part of the traitorous elites who are running things now.

[Generic Other]

18. You are right...we value ignorance over intellect today

as never before. We value materialism to the extent that we see pictures of a presidential candidate brought up to reflect our values posed with his business cohorts "eating" money. We see rappers as Bill Maher pointed out doing the same thing flashing wads of cash and bling. Seems the smart people have the green. The ones who think they are so smart have homes in foreclosure.

I hate this world view. It so thoroughly creates value where none exists.

[DeathToTheOil]

11. "The American public, for the most part, can't read and don't read"

I believe that is from the same column, which I read at the time.

[lpbk2713]

13. That sums up the eight years of the corrupt and evil BushCo Regime succinctly.

And still applies to the vestigial remains of what is left of the rethuglican party.

[Motown_Johnny]

14. K&R for my favorite author (plus a video link and a little trivia)

not my favorite quote from him but I love that it is used here for the proper effect



http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=o2o2-k3kM6A



Trivia:

He is the only author to have works published in every category of the Dewey Decimal system


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov

^snip^

His works have been published in all ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System (although his only work in the 100s—which covers philosophy and psychology—was a foreword for The Humanist Way)

[libinnyandia]

20. One of my favorite quotes was from a tv interview:

He referred to men as "animated bags of sperm"

[catrose]

21. One of my favorites was in an interview where he was asked about how women were represented in sf

He allowed as there might be some problems "because my first novel was published before my first date."

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

19. "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." Isaac Asimov

[patrice]

23. "A People's History of the United States" bears this out.

Thinking here about how ignorance of the details of our actual history is held equal to knowing the facts.