In 2016, I wrote a blog post, later incorporated into a book, titled “The Death of Smart.” In it, I argued that knowledge had taken a cultural hit. Americans once valued knowing things. Those who had knowledge must have earned it by hard work over long hours in classrooms, libraries and labs. But in the internet age, when almost all knowledge is accessible by almost all people, “smart” has become a less-desirable descriptor than others like “influential” or “disruptive.
In our flattened news landscape, many imagine themselves as modern media 49ers, panning for gold in the hopes of hitting a nerve, announcing a trove and converting it to followers.Some of the reasons for this trend are plain. The institutions we used to trust to inform us have sometimes betrayed that trust. Few trust the media because we don’t want to be dupes. Again.Nagel pointed out that there are also more exposed spots in our knowledge base than ever in human history.
First, conversations about the news have become riddled with shibboleths. To mark the gate between those with insider knowledge and those without, we create cultural buzzwords with a hint of exclusivity: woke, IYKYK, let’s go Brandon. “Grown men and women who swore an oath to our Constitution, elected by their constituents, possessing the kinds of college degrees I could only dream of, have decided to join the mob and become something they are not while hoping we somehow forget who they were. They’ve decided to burn it all down with us inside. That should scare you to no end...”