If you want to be viewed as an educated person, you have to do the necessary work. Educated people know when you don’t know your facts. You cannot make up the facts and try to present them as real facts. Too many people want to act like they know everything. It’s impossible for you to know everything. All clear thinking people understand this reality. Why would you want to attempt to present yourself like you know everything? No one likes someone who pretends like he or she knows everything.
Those who try to pretend like they know everything are envious and jealous of those who really are highly knowledgeable people. When a truly knowledgeable person on a wide variety of things attempts to give the pretenders the facts, the pretenders will try to make their ignorance appear as facts. The best way to handle pretenders is to present the facts to them and then move on from them. They’re a waste of your energy.
With so many things you need to and have to invest your energy in, you don’t need to waste it on meaningless discussions and debates with people who are pretenders. Remember that truth always triumphs over falsehood inevitably.
Never downplay your intelligence to make others feel better or to let a pretender off the hook easily. Don’t simply not offer the truth because you’re around a pretender, considering you know the individual is not interested in facts and it won’t matter what you say to him or her. Speak the truth no matter if you feel it will matter or not.
You will be surprised how even your family and friends will be envious and jealous of your knowledge when they want to be right about something or be right about something all the time. Many people are simply not comfortable not knowing everything. Don’t be surprised if you sit at the kitchen table with pretenders and/or hang out at the mall with them. Pretenders are everywhere and your family and friends are not automatically exempt from being pretenders.
If there’s something you don’t know and you desire to know it, do what it takes to learn it. Don’t hate on others because they know what you don’t know. Some people who have not truly earned their degrees; that is, had other people doing their work for them to get their degrees feel inadequate when they’re engaged in a discourse with people who are truly educated and they cannot perform satisfactorily. This just goes to show you that a degree alone does not make you educated—it’s the learning you obtain, whether it’s in a degree program or outside of the confines of a brick and mortar institution.
Don’t pretend to be educated—go out get educated!
Deuces,
Tony
