Quote:
Originally Posted by historycircus
Anything read on Wikipedia or similar sites needs to be verified with the same scrutiny given a potential monograph  . Eight year old Jimmy from Hoboken should not be considered as valid a source on say, slavery, as Ira Berlin - a man who has dedicated his entire 30+ year career to the study of slavery. Yet, on Wikipedia, Jimmy can edit Berlin. Forget Africa for a second, we have an entire generation right here in the United States who have access to huge libraries, and refuse to use them not because they reject the legitimacy of the corporate presses, but because they are lazy, don't have the attention span to read a book, and refuse to take the I-pod buds out of their ears long enough.
Most of these kids are so tuned out that they don't even ask whether or not the presses are secretly controlled. And it sounds to me like that kid in Africa, and I'm not trying to be a smart ass here, has bigger things to worry about than deliberately tinkered-with articles on Wikipedia.
The point behind my Wikipedia statements is that anyone interested in doing real research needs get out from in front of their computers and get their butts to an archive, library, etc. - especially college kids in the Western world. |
Historycircus,
Please accept my sincere respect for your opinions. I have not directly engaged anyone in heated debate here until your post. My reason for doing so in this case was to reflect your words to you, and my motivation was to point out the duality in your intentions and your actions. We all seem to exhibit these traits in our quests.
I watch my son embrace the culture and frameworks of society he lives in and he both reads books and uses wiki every day. I feel, I FEEL, that any intentional conscious propagation of known mistruths (tm) is a disservice to humanity. PERIOD. Further, I am glad 'Jimmy' can import his perceptions into wiki, because Jimmy may, at the as yet not fully indoctrinated young age, be much more informed than me on some topic of my interest.
If we must funnel anger, I gently submit that the adaptive behavior of our youth into iPods, distractions, entertainment and other attention span influencing activities are exactly the results that the controllers have carefully plotted, nurtured and implemented. I think to label them as lazy may be to focus on the symptom and detracts from investigating the cause. Have you ever watched a child engage in online gaming, I have, and some do research for the best tactics, network for clues, join in massive 'raids' to take down powerful opponents and solve quests. I don't condone these games or the inherent violent content and themes, but I observe intense engagement that I deem far from laziness. They seem to have been corralled and manipulated into what many would deem as nonproductive use of their amazing energies.
I feel the kid in Africa is sovereign and thus holds all rights to decide what to worry about.
We all have slices of the truth that integrate to become the whole truth, in my opinion ...
NAMASTE!