“Knowledge is power. Not knowing anything doesn’t matter.” The level of this famous saying can be debated, but at least it contains a humorous element.
“Why too much knowledge can harm the public” is the headline of a podcast that the online portal of the liberal think tank the time It was published – and there is nothing funny about it.
They mean it seriously.
In the audio clip they speak time– Journalists Petra Penzler and Stefan Schmidt (Knowledge Department) with sociologist Alexander Bogner about – yes, about what? About “knowledge”, one way or another.
The result is a conversation that creates its own value in its own quirky, quirky guise.
It can be summed up as follows: In spite of all thought, in spite of all analysis: the conventional knowledge of our time is right, the mainstream is right, and in the pandemic there was “science” that—surprise! – was right.
Penzler inserted: “I remember […] At that time, when I was young, everyone saw “Tagesschau”, and then everyone saw “Tatort”, and I had the feeling that there was a common idea of knowledge. And that seems to be fading more and more.”
Bogner enters: «…if you cannot do this, then you run into anti-worlds so far removed from the facts, and then you insist that you yourself […] You have your own fact of science…”
In other words: At that time, when there was no Internet, everyone believed the indisputable “truth” of “Tageschau”.
That was nice.
And what “science” says is always true.
It ignores the fact that “science” does not exist and that what some consider to be “science” is often a product of power relations.
And if one’s own thinking place is also excluded, yes, the world will become as it is in the podcast.
“Alcohol buff. Troublemaker. Introvert. Student. Social media lover. Web ninja. Bacon fan. Reader.”