Like many Americans, Carolina Giuliani was paralyzed over the prospect that Donald Trump — the man she blames for ruining her father and damaging her family — could be close to returning to the White House.
…
“It’s a hard phenomenon to understand. It definitely is,” Carolina Giuliani said. “I view Trump as a disease, and I think it’s really important to remember that with every disease, prevention is a much more effective strategy than treatment. … I thought we had cured ourselves of it the first time, but it doesn’t seem like we have.
“And I think if he becomes the president again, we may have a terminal illness in our country. And that really, really scares me.”
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People want to believe that they’re informed. Want to believe that they know things others don’t. That they are wise. And will push back when challenged. Because they don’t know the one thing every wise person knows. Just how much they don’t know. Fools are confidently wrong. The wise are cautiously correct.
45 years ago:
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
― Isaac Asimov
You’re absolutely right. I’d just like to add on:
Wise people learn from the mistakes of others. They observe and take note of chains of events, and use that knowledge in order to guide their own decisions in the future.
Wise people question what they believe. If they feel cognitive dissonance, they don’t ignore it; they examine their ideas and consider the prospect that they may be wrong. They can change their minds based on new evidence.
Wise people are skeptical. When they learn about a situation, they don’t take immediate sides based on knee-jerk emotions. Rather, they examine all available information and come around to their own ideas in their own time.
Using all of the above points are what guide wise people towards “cautiously correct” decisions. They are more likely “correct” because they base their ideas on a greater pool of information, and are capable of discarding ideas even if the ideas “feel good” to believe in. They remain “cautious,” because no matter how sure they believe they are, they are well aware that there’s a chance they could still be mistaken.