Richard Feynman famously highlighted the difference between truly knowing something and just knowing the name of something.
Take Stoicism for example. Over the past few years, that school of philosophy had somewhat of a renaissance. I hesitate to call it a true renaissance, because I see many people who know some of the headlines of Stoicism, but very few embodying any of its principles.
I am squarely in the camp of “I just know the headlines”. If you force me to explain what Stoicism is, you’ll likely hear a 30-second answer that has some of the following words:
Rome, Marcus Aurelius, virtue, equanimity…
As I say each of those things, I hope your expressions will indicate that you are convinced that I “know” Stoicism. And I’ll be relieved by the end of the answer, having proven to myself that I indeed “know” it, because of my string of words over the previous 30 seconds.
The hard part about being even mildly curious and having the world’s information at our fingertips is that it’s very easy to surf the headlines of many topics and be convinced that we “got the gist” of all of them. So what if none of it filters down into our way of life? We at least have some bullet points and can sound smart for about 30 seconds.
Here’s my point: Don’t deceive yourself. You probably know a lot less about most things than you think you do. Learn deeply and be humble.