Author's Note: This is an article meant to be published on MARSocial, but unfortunately the posting went wrong and it seems that trolls may have gotten to it, thus rendering it unpublishable by the site. Hence, I publish it here. I think it's pretty important. Also, I don't have to leave out all the fuck words...heh. Enjoy, dears.
I saw a bumper sticker today that read: "Information Is Power". I thought "What a bunch of shit,” and thought of the idiotic commercials meant to sell technology that spew the same erroneous message. Millenniums of history past have taught us as a species that information alone is not power. Standing by itself, information is only that: information. It lies around like a forgotten penny any dipshit can pick up and put in his pocket as though he has earned money when in fact all he did was bend over where others walked on. Does that make him smart? Does the click of a mouse coupled with the reading of facts that may possibly have been altered make a person smart? I daresay “No.” In this, the information age, people have been confused by the difference between knowledge and information.
To test this theory, I asked a good friend of mine, a college graduate in fact, this question: “Which gives one power, information or knowledge?”
“Aren’t they the same?” she asked. This savvy, intelligent, college educated individual had no idea that the two are simply close cousins and not twins.
“No, they’re not,” I said.
“How so?”
“OK,” I said. “I can Google, say, Stem-Cell Research and get a bunch of information about how doctors may use stem-cells to regenerate human tissue. However, that doesn’t mean I feel ready to rush out and boost some stem-cells from Fermi-Lab, chop my hand off, and pour stem-cells on the stump just to see if my hand regenerates like Swamp Thing in the sun. Dig?”
“I never thought about it like that,” she said.
“Neither does anyone else,” I said. “They just repeat what they’re fed by the plasma screen.”
Information is garnered through education which leads to experience which further leads to an empirical knowledge of one’s field of research. Once knowledge is attained, only then is bred power. Remember when you were a kid and your mother or father told you how to ride a bike the first time? Did you wipe out and skin your knee? More than likely. Why? Because you did not know, you were only informed. The feel and instinct comes from practice and the understanding that no, you don’t like pain, you don’t want antiseptic rubbed over your road-rash because that crap stings. After awhile, you learn and, by proxy, know, how to ride a bicycle. And maybe you become a contestant on the X-Games, or you just gain the respect of your buddies. Either way, the power you have attained did not come from the information, but the know-how.
Still not with me? That's shitty. I should have made myself clear, but...OK. I’ve been playing guitar for twenty-two years. I will inform you on how to make a G Chord. Top string E, fret three. Second string A, fret two. Leave the other stings open, and push down on the third fret of the high-E string, the last, and thinnest, string. Now strum.
BWONG!
Why? Because you’ve only been informed. You have neither the practice nor the pain that comes with reaching the institution of knowledge. You have not built up your calluses, you have no idea in what position the guitar should sit on your lap and even if I tell you chances are it will not feel comfortable, and maybe you’re a lefty and have to re-string the whole guitar. But with knowledge and the effort needed to grasp it, you may have the power to become the next Jimi Hendrix. You do not know. My information to you amounts to a pile of horse-feces in your mind and shit, you'll probably end up pissed off at me unless I give you a more thorough lesson. Either way, you sill won't be able to go home and make a proper G Chord, though it may be passable, and you damn sure won't know how to switch to a fucking F.
Consider your sources and practice the information you learn before making dynamite just because you looked up the information on the internet. Otherwise you’ll blow your face off. I guarantee it. Or, if you're a shithead, and really believe that information and not knowledge is power, that the information age has made us all more powerful, please, by all means, go home, hop on the net, look up how to make dynamite, and try that shit out. This way, you'll kill yourself and thusly will no longer be able to breed more dumbshits.
If you are not a dumbshit, and are still with me, good. Please...do not go home and try to make dynamite. You will be less a face and arms. The last thing we need as a race is the loss of smart people to dumb fucks, and boy, are we in serious danger of that happening.
If you don't believe me, just look at that be-suited pedophile on the "Which Is Better?" commercials. The monotone, flat faced fucker that just strikes me as a stalker. Maybe it's me. All I know for sure is that he's trying to sell fucking phones, for Christ's sake. Phones to children; but then advertising has always targeted children because they're the ones that go "MOMMYMOMMYMOMMYMOMMYWAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!" when they don't get their way. Mommy relents and buys the iPhone, or whatever fucking fuck phone is out there. And then the kids become whores and dope dealers with no respect for their parents. Thanks, Apple and Dr. Fuckface Phil. Assholes.
Some adults do that too. Cry, that is. I don't know what this up and coming generation will be labeled, but here's my label for them right now--the "iWant" generation.
Christ, if I acted like the kids in commercials these days my father--and mother, for that matter, whom I think is very gentle--would have kicked the ever-loving dogshit out of me. I might have gotten a syllable out before Dad punched me in the face--and I mean that quite literally--or Mom slapped my ears red. But nope, can't do that anymore...now we have a race of Village of the Damned little communists running around controlling their parents...ugly.
I digress. Or do I?
Knowledge is Power, people. Not fucking information. Please...re-grow your brains. Please. Before the world turns into earwax.
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