To pick up where I last left off ... just what do we know any more?
What we know ... and if you don't believe me, just ask those bright young guys who own Google ... is merely information. We have tons and tons of information, but do we have any knowledge? I can't help but think of Eliot's
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
(from "The Rock", 1934)
T.S. was onto something there. (Well, actually, he was on to much, much more, for the line preceding those two is "Where is the Life we have lost in living?", and that puts it all into a much more existential context, but that, too, is a matter for another time).
Yes, just what do we know any more? Let's see ...
Information is just information. May 8 is just May 8, no more, no less. Even May 8, 1945 is just another day that slipped by in history unless I know (and here is where we come closer to the issue) that it was on that particular day that Germany surrendered ending World War II in Europe. It's still not knowledge, it's just a fact, but it is a piece of knowledge when we use it to make clear to another that terror and fascism of one type was bid halt by its successor. We need to think about what we mean when we use the term "knowledge". After all, it is more than just information, it is information in service of a purpose greater than itself.
That terror and fascism were bid halt is obviously a good thing. The part of that sentence about its successor will make some readers uneasy, and that is the very reason that it was added. This isn't a test, don't get me wrong, but while most of us agree on the first part of the statement, there are more than just a few who would accept the second part. Why is that? To me, it is clear: because it expresses a value, but it is a value that some folks may or may not agree is truly a value. The implication in the sentence is that what followed wasn't all that much better than what came before.
How could I possibly compare democracy with fascism? Well, I'm not really. When we consider that fascism is a type of economic organization, then its successor, that is, the system which we chose to replace it was either "communism" in the East bloc or "capitalism" in the West. The fact that those eastern economies called themselves democratic this or that has nothing to do with ignorance on their part, rather ignorance on ours, in the West. Democracy can be defined in any number of ways. There is no one, accepted, valid definition of what the term may mean. There are variations on the others (fascism, capitalism and communism), to be sure, but the span of variation is much smaller.
It would seem then that Humpty Dumpty was at least partially right: in many cases words seem to mean just what we mean that they mean. And what they convey ... is it information, knowledge, or something else altogether?