Knowledge

Knowledge, clear and certain mental apprehension, is what we know, believe, and differs from person to person. Our logic is guided, commanded by everything around us. The world we know about is the world as presented to us by others. Our ideas and views on the world come from everyone and everything we have ever seen. We take up all information and that material generally turns into our knowledge, what we know.

People, in general, are often too apt to believe everything they see and hear. They do not judge whether the evidence is good enough or whether it coheres with their previous knowledge, unless it is so farfetched that it is impossible to believe. The people should question authority and demand sufficient evidence, but they don’t and they don’t learn from their mistakes. Take for example America and Iraq; President Bush said there were weapons of mass destruction and that was the cause of an invasion into Iraq preceding the war. Now we know that the information he gave us is false, but then almost everyone in America believed and supported him. We regarded his news as correct and didn’t question it until much later. From the example follows that there are a lot of people who inherit the beliefs and truths of an authorizing body without question, but, luckily, there are also some who interrogate these beliefs. If people believe very easily then they will trust everything said and written by other people, their knowledge, truth, world is then assembled, put together, by other people.

Most of our knowledge is second hand knowledge. To acquire a lot of knowledge efficiently you must rely on other people and there truths, it is eminently faster than forming your own observation and certainty on everything. Second hand knowledge comes from many different sources, for example: culture, school, internet, expert opinion, and the news media. Our culture, behaviours and beliefs characteristic of a particular social group, is formed by the people around us. Later on in life our culture plays a big role in how we observe the world, because it is what we are accustomed to. School, education, also have a lot to do with your knowledge. You are taught to think in a certain way and to believe certain things. Schools may also use indoctrination to assure that students don’t learn to question things and so they take things as they are. We often surf the internet to find some facts on a certain subject, a great percentage of people believe what they read on the internet, but how can we be sure? Posted on internet are the thoughts and beliefs of a big population of people, which we take in as truths. We often tend to believe statements coming from experts, they who have studied the subject thoroughly know it best. It is impossible for someone to know everything, but however if they say it, it