Filtering Out Wisdom From Fluff
May 17, 2008 · Reading Time: 3min 34sec · Print This Article
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To begin this article, I think telling a story of how I came to know this particular subject would be most apt.
When I was about 17 years old, I started to pick up books on financial literacy. Now, when you’re 17, with the budget of a typical 17 year old, and you suddenly feel the urge to be educated on what it means to have financial freedom, there are really not many options for you to even think of of where to start learning that on your own. So I headed to the bookstores and grabbed this particular best-seller series which markets itself as the book on financial freedom.
Book 1 was interesting, and was accompanied along with many extras like boardgames and videos. Book 1 was an easy and enlightening read… it got me motivated. And so I read book 2.
Book 2, like book 1, continued to explained the topics with much flow and simplicity. Reading it was really not that difficult. So I moved on to book 3.
It took me awhile to locate book 3, and after purchasing it online a year after reading book1, I opened the covers of book 3. However this time, as I was reading through, something inside me was troubled. Something was fishy. So I decided to do some research on this best selling author…
I never completed book 3.
While I wouldn’t want to go into detail of what I found out, in summary it was a problem with his integrity, of what he said in the book and what he was actually in real life. The initial alarm bells were not so much on his integrity, but on the fact that the models he preached, though enlightening in the beginning, seemed to be going nowhere by the time book 3 was up: there was not much education on finances at all (despite the branding of the book) … it was more like a feel good book.
Earlier this week I visited my friend in his education centre and we then dwelled upon the topic of theories, of how it is there can be differences in the way people perceive simple theories. His point was sound, emphasizing the fact that sometimes, simple theories are the result of genius and intelligence, of making the complicated seemingly effortless.
I agreed, and added that also, sometimes simple theories are bogus as well. We then thought about it, and agreed that having knowledge is your best defence to siff out the wisdom from the fluff.
God places His wisdom in sometimes mysterious ways. As I was reading through this book on Tauhid by Abdul Majid Aziz Az-Zindani on the topic of how we can be sure and have faith on something which is beyond our visual comprehension, there the answer was.
As learners, we can increase our probability of siffing out wisdom from fluff by measuring the information
- Based on its effects.
- Based on a source which is reliable.
It was point 1 which ringed my alarm bell to decide to check on the author of the book, and the realization that he did not score well on point 2 that made me decide that that was a lesson in being critical of who you gain the knowledge from. It’s left me wondering how so many depend on his books, so many form advocate groups, which has led to his status as a bestseller.
I conclude by tying it back to the central themes of this site: marketing, motivation, muslim, and focus on the first being marketing and all things business. Coming from business school, I cannot stress enough how so so many books and sites out there preach information on business which is dubious, speculative and hinges around the “simple feel good” concept to gain support. Sometimes the cracks are so jarring, at other times dangerously hidden. It’s disturbing when you sometimes see the many bright sparks out there, eager to learn, and are now being taught by these teachers.
Put on your critical hat everytime you begin to feel that you are beginning to change your viewpoints based on this new fact that you’re seeing or hearing way too fast and too easily. For whatever the teacher or the source is preaching, look for evidence of expertise. Now, we’re not saying that you strictly have to have qualification from some prestigious university to be credible; we advocate the evidence of expertise based on ilm and ‘amal, on both theory and evidence of him putting his teachings into practice and that they work. Keeping an eye on the source of knowledge (from books or through experience) plus evidence of him being successful at what he preaches is one of the few ways I know that you can be safe from the fluff.
Just like we are not kites who fly where the wind feels good, so too shoudn’t we be swayed so easily when confronted with stuff that feels good. Instead. we are the hands which decide where to thrust our kites into the God-given sky, who, even when given a choice between a stormy versus a calm sky, choose to (even then) to pause before deciding, knowing well that it could be that the stormy sky is one which can produce the rainbow, and not the other. God has taught us well in the Qur’an:
“…And it may be that you dislike a thing that is good for you…”
[2:216]
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