What is common knowledge? A somewhat ambiguous question. Both interpretations are important.

What do most people know? What should they know? What do they know about what others know, and what do they believe about what others should know? Knowledge—or ignorance—is a rabbit hole. But maybe it’s worth trying to find the bottom, so that we can start filling it in.

There is a war on. Not just now, but all the time. It is mostly a cold war. It is mostly invisible. Strategies are devised behind closed doors. The fighting happens in the open, but it is easily misunderstood as something else. The war is for control. As a cold war, it is mostly fought by proxy. The main proxy is attention. Attention is power. And the struggle is to gain and keep attention.

As discussed previously, people are superstitious. They are also curious. And they like to gossip. If you understand people’s emotions, and their impulses, and what attracts their attention, you can put ideas into their heads. You can mold their beliefs. You can manipulate their understanding.

This is typically called “propaganda”. I don’t want to write about propaganda. I don’t know enough. I have simply observed some things. I have watched the war for attention, and seen some of the damage it does.

One effect of the war for attention is that people acquire mostly useless knowledge. Whether in public school or private life, the information they are given is mostly meant to serve others’ interests, not their own. Perhaps that’s debatable. It hinges on how we determine someone’s interests in the first place, which is contentious, and not easy.

Reader, you might be thinking, “Sure, ‘Knowledge is Power,’ blah blah blah.” But only certain kinds of knowledge translate into power. Other kinds translate into weakness.

I don’t think that power is the only benefit of knowledge. But we have to consider how power affects our lives, whether it’s our power, or someone else’s. Shouldn’t we devote some of our mental capacities to knowing about what’s going on? Shouldn’t we prioritize knowing what is could significantly affect us, instead of what is ephemeral?

I suppose it depends upon whether a person wants to live with awareness only of the moment. Except that much of what is considered “current” happens far away, involves only strangers, and is generally inconsequential. Unless we reduce ourselves to fanatic followers, whose lives are completely subordinate to those of more important, more glamourous, more powerful people.

I don’t like fandom. Respect and appreciation are fine. Fawning adoration is terrible.

This seems like a tangent. But what a lot of people know reduces to who they adore, and their knowledge about those people’s lives. Instead of more significant and consequential knowledge, which affects their own lives directily.

Am I saying, “I don’t like shallow people”? Partly. Forget my opinion of people. What matters is our knowledge of people, including their depth of understanding. (I can be shallow, too.)

It is impossible for everyone to know what everyone else knows. I am not arguing that we should have all the details in our heads. However, I do think we should have all the details in a big public database. We should also have an executive summary, also publicly available, and widely broadcast.

More importantly, we should all have a common base of significant knowledge. We should know what is critical to our safety, security, health, and happiness. Not just some clever and ambitious and elitist people. Everyone should know. And we should also know how many or how few of us know these essential things (or, by implication, don’t know them).

We can argue about what is essential or not. In fact, that is the point. We should argue about it a lot more. We should consider the question a lot more often, and more seriously. If we did, it might inspire us to learn more, and at the same time provide a sense of emphasis.

The problem with shallow fandom is that we think it is our life. We think that what affects famous people is what affects us. But it isn’t hard to see that that isn’t true.

While the doings of actors, musicians, and athletes (and entrepreneurs and religious leaders) affects our enjoyment of life, it is only their creative and performance work that matters. The drive to form cliques of supporters and detractors, to take sides in their personal and professional squabbles, to fight proxy wars about who is better, or generally to stake our lives and happiness on issues of taste, preference, and dedication to our heroes, is foolish. It is to be concerned with a phantom world. One that will dissipate under the slightest pressure from substantial reality.

People who are consumed with the events in a phantom world are, consequentially, ignorant of the events in the real world. The real world is where our bodies exist, and where the necessities of life come from. The phantom world of fame and glamour exists overtop of that world. To fixate on a phantom world is to be oblivious and vulnerable. But they are not alone.

To live in a world—the physical world—full of people preoccupied with a phantom world is to be in a precarious position. The oblivious are incapable of making good decisions about the real world. Which, in a democracy, affects the well-grounded as much as the air heads. They are a threat to everyone, either by having a majority say, or by leaving important decisions to the largest plurality. That plurality might be no more or less delusional, but equally preoccupied with phantom reality, but one which has a better connection back to actual reality, making them explicitly dangerous.

This is a plea to others who are not (completely) in thrall to phantom realities. If I were a Buddhist, I would laugh, because that would mean everyone who is not yet enlightened, i.e. virtually everyone. I may be equally caught up in my own phantom world. I do not buy the Buddhist interpretation—not completely. They make some good points, but it seems a very complicated means of committing suicide. Also, they believe in reincarnation and other bunk, so they are also enthralled to phantoms.

I have gotten somewhat sidetracked. But I felt it was important to have some context.

I think we should try to understand the degree to which everyone is or is not enthralled by the illusory concerns of the many and various phantom worlds, and, conversely, the degree to which they are ignorant of and oblivious to the concerns of the real, actual, material world which we all share. Most people do believe that there is a real material world. They know they need food, water, shelter, and security. They realize, at some level, that the freedom to dissolve into a phantom reality is utterly dependent upon a safe and dependable real world. But they are also complacent about it, and take it for granted, assuming that nothing can really threaten it.

The non-complacent ought to know: how many are they? How many, in contrast, are complacent? What do we all know about that we should know, versus what is not essential (though it might be fun)? I would certainly like to know how many are like me, and are interested in critical issues and events that might imperil the stability of the world, and the systems which sustain it.

It is worth knowing both the current state of essential systems (whether natural or artificial) and also the attention which is being given to them by the electorate, or just by people. And by “attention” I mean both observing and maintaining. A lot of essential systems are, in reality, being sorely neglected. This neglect will have consequences. The longer the neglect, the worse consequences. Those of us aware of the neglect, unhappy with it, yet not able to do much about it, need to take stock of the situation. How dire is it? How might things go wrong? What will we do?

We have the right to protect ourselves. We aren’t obligated to go down with a sinking ship. Ideally, we would alert more people. Inform them of the issues, and enlist their support in preventing catastrophe. Certainly that is happening. Althought it often seems like such efforts are naive and clumsy. Because too few appreciate the serious degree to which others are consumed with phantoms, and oblivious to emerging critical threats.

The most ironic thing would be for the generally attentive to have a single, fatal blind spot: the inattentiveness of their compatriots and fellow travelers. And for those least responsible to share the same dismal fate of the most responsible, whether the delusional destroyers of those systems we rely on, or the rest, who are too distracted by frivolous nonsense to smell the smoke of their own house burning.

I guess we’ll see.