I think in my life I’ve experienced more than my fair share of quacks. I even consider at least one such person (i.e., a “quack”) within the circle of my own close family members. Throughout the many years and decades, quacks are littered more or less all the way along my own path. Some I have been quite easily able to shake off before they were able to do me much harm, others have unfortunately left deep scars behind which haunt me and rob me from well-deserved and sorely needed sleep on long, dark, cold and stormy winter nights.
I guess for the most part a large degree of the damage done occurred during periods on insufficient skepticism. Know-nothings will happily and merrily breed on the naiveté of pupils, scholars, students and assorted teenies, juveniles, adolescents and aspiring adults alike. Thirst for knowledge, experience, wisdom and whatnot more far outweighs the dearth of an ample supply of such resources.
The widespread social systems devised to impart reliability are still no match for the swarms of charlatans thriving in the free markets heating up all over the globe. Just the other day on one of the podcasts I follow, Ms. Phetasy was ranting about the newfangled systems that are being developed in order to provide “solutions” to old-fashioned problems (which are well-known and have also been solved almost a century ago by John Maynard Keynes) related to the way suckers are easily misled in the whirlwind of information being traded in markets worldwide. [1]
I find it more and more difficult to become outraged by widespread stupidity, illiteracy, bad decisions and whatnot. I think my own youth was perhaps filled with too much of “Great Expectations” for humanity. In the meantime, I think I have become much more accustomed to the lack of interest most humans show for pretty much anything and everything.
Socio Business blog 