How important is worldly knowledge?

I often get annoyed at 井底之蛙. Something tells me I'm just being mean and judgemental. How important is general knowledge, really?

Let's be practical first.
There is no fixed syllabus (unless you count the GP one), and even if there was, by nature, this hypothetical textbook would just keep expanding and expanding. So why waste time reading today's news if it might just change tomorrow? How do we determine the relevance, the sensitivity of an issue? Frankly, I've probably already forgotten 80% of what exactly I read two TIME issues back.

Even if we knew these things... does it matter? OK so Xi Jinping got kicked out of the Communist Party Politburo. Ok Mitt Romney won the Republican Primaries. Woop Woop. Wait a minute, how the hell does this affect me again?

Perhaps this is something difficult to measure, or understand. Like why music works. Why can it calm someone down, why can it hype someone up? Why do people who know more about the world seem better at analyzing, at thinking and conversing smartly? Perhaps intuition tells us its just a good thing to know about. The world at large I mean.

And I guess, when it boils down to it, reading current affairs is a syllabus that you master over time. That, in the long run, one can tell instinctively, if this is going to be big. That even if it didn't appear on the front page, it's going to in the future. Its a trained, sense. Kind of like social skills right? You just sort of, know.

The context.
Though we live in a relatively safe society (which in itself could be the problem), you never know. If I told you that Incans lived in Africa and predicted the end of the world in 2014, would you believe me? Of course, when I phrase it like that, you wouldn't. But maybe you didn't realize that earlier I said Xi Jinping got kicked out of the Communist Party when actually it was Bo Xilai. And that the former is actually the vice-premier soon to be premier. Do you realize how easily manipulated you could be without trying your hardest to find out the truth? Or just trying to figure things out yourself? Back when information was scarce and localized, was also back when voodoo was widely practiced and people believed that some divine human-looking beings lived on a nearby mountain whose name is now a photography and consumer electronics brand.

Rumours work on the ignorance of its purveyors.

Isn't it scary to think that the people around you could be so easily manipulated then? And perhaps all because they were lazy? Or apathetic?

Sometimes my classmates ask me to chill when I get pissed that they don't know certain things. Granted, I have gone overboard sometimes regarding less well-known issues. But questions like 'China is a democracy? Since when?' should not be disregarded, because it reveals how vulnerable we are should someone attempt to use the foolish to forward his personal whims. I'm afraid the person who asked that question, is also in Raffles Institution. Nothing could be more shocking.

"Two Things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." -Albert Einstein

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When you play inverted, you endanger the lives of those around you.