Am I Stuck Up?
So I do a lot of blog reading during the day and am constantly amazed at the lack of what I consider general knowledge. And when these bloggers reveal these amazing truths that everyone has already known about for years, they get a stream of praise and “OMG! I totally didn’t know that. You are a genius!” I’m baffled and a bit disgusted at how many people are so slow to hear about something so mainstream, and then I wonder maybe if I’m being a bit too harsh.
Like just hearing about bad-for-you chemicals in just about every product you put on your body, or how using plastic bags is bad for the environment or how many weird things are in prepackaged food and how it’s just better (and easy) to make it yourself. Seriously? Are you people living under a rock or just illiterate? This is not news! You are not some pioneer in healthy living, you are late to party that has been rocking for years.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe not everyone watches tv or reads or keeps up with current events. I dunno, sometimes I think people are retarded and slow, but maybe I’m just being stuck up because I know so much more than the common person.
I’m lucky enough to not have to work and so I have lots of time to learn new things all the time. And I know not everyone has time to keep up with all the things going on. So am I too harsh with people or are they really just slow?
I don’t really care, I just needed to vent. :)
I'm a house wife in Seattle who's world inside her head is much more preferable than the one outside her window.
Not slow, maybe, but different. I see a lot of people in my daily work, and I am also amazed at the things people don’t know that I think are basic knowledge. Cooking, to me, comes natural, and yes it’s cheaper and just as easy to make things from scratch, but give people a break who don’t know, or have just learned something you’ve known for years. At least they are trying something new, to them. I have friends who can weld, fix cars, tell me how to maintain my house, but couldn’t even cook beans! They’ve spent their time learning different things than I have. From their perspective, I am really retarded.
You can help teach the unhip folks the things they need to know, and the reasons they need to know….
“maybe I’m just being stuck up because I know so much more than the common person.”
I get where you’re coming from, but that phrase is pretty stuck up-sounding.
Heh, yeah, I suppose I am being a prissy little bitch. It’s not that I think I’m smarter than everyone else, I just think I have too much time on my hands. So I read and learn a lot.
But I also understand the difference between knowing a skill and knowing what’s going on in the world around you. Of course not everyone knows how to cook or weld metal, but everyone (at least the non impoverished countries) knows that smoking cigarettes is bad for you. One is a skill that you learn when you need to/because you want to, while the other is general knowledge that has been put out there for the populace to know. And it’s a pretty important thing to know. You don’t need to know the intricate details as to why it’s bad for you if you don’t want to, but the general knowing of it is something everyone knows. And if you told someone that cigarettes is bad for them and they have no clue what you’re talking about, you’d ask if they had just woken up from a coma or are from the past. You would judge them. And then you would go on to explain how they’re bad for you because you care.
Good argument, you are right about a difference between a skill and knowing something that should be general knowledge in our culture. But some people really don’t know about cooking healthy, they’ve never been exposed to it and are from a culture that eschews anything unfamiliar. Then you find someone like that here or there that is openminded, teach them, and learn what you can from them.
“Like just hearing about bad-for-you chemicals in just about every product you put on your body, or how using plastic bags is bad for the environment or how many weird things are in prepackaged food and how it’s just better (and easy) to make it yourself.”
A lot of folks just don’t believe its so, not scientifically literate to understand, they are not going to listen whatevr you try to teach.