The New Mind Virus Quickly Overtaking Our Societies

We ask ourselves why there is so much misinformation and polarization today, but the answer is apparent to anyone paying attention: the toxic combination of arrogance and ignorance.

A non-Jew having an arrogant and ignorant opinion about Israel, Zionism, etc. mistaking their distorted perspective for authority over a story that is not theirs to rewrite. (photo: t s/Unsplash)

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There is a dangerous mood spreading across public discourse in far too many countries, driven by an acute psychological flaw: a toxic blend of arrogance and ignorance.

Arrogance, because people believe with absolute certainty that they suddenly understand nearly every issue on earth, possess impenetrable moral clarity, and are bravely speaking truth to power. Ignorance, because they lack anything resembling serious, long-term, disciplined knowledge about the very topics they pontificate on.

It is one of the worst combinations a person can have, and today it is everywhere.

From my vantage point, part of the problem is how casually we label people as “super smart” or “incredibly intelligent.” We’ve begun to treat intelligence as a general credential that applies broadly, rather than as something deeply domain-specific. Someone may indeed be brilliant in one or two or three fields, yet completely uneducated — or even embarrassingly wrong — about dozens of others.

An economist, for example, may understand monetary policy, labor markets, inflation cycles, capital flows, public finance, banking, business trends, and how they have effects on society at large, as well as more specific areas like education, public health, real estate, and commerce. But that doesn’t mean they know the first thing about Middle Eastern geopolitics, Israeli history, Judaism, the dynamics of Zionism, or the historical contours of the Israeli–Arab conflict.

In other words, many of us treat someone who is smart about something as though they must be smart about everything, and they often believe this myth as well. Their expertise in one domain becomes a blank check they feel entitled to cash everywhere else.

This illusion has been supercharged by the digital age. Social media algorithms elevate those who speak in absolutes and condemn those who speak with nuance. Certainty is rewarded; humility is punished. A person can go viral for one well-crafted thread and suddenly behave as though they’ve earned the right to opine authoritatively on every global issue. Platforms incentivize shallow overviews, theatrical confidence, and 15-second “explainers” that flatten complexity into buzzwords and special effects. People mistake visibility for wisdom. They confuse boldness with depth. They begin to believe that because they have an audience, they must also have expertise.

Psychology has a name for this pattern: the Dunning–Kruger effect, the phenomenon where the least knowledgeable are often the most confident. People with just enough information to be dangerous consistently overestimate their mastery, while those with true understanding tend to speak cautiously because they see how deep and complex the subject really is. Arrogance grows fastest in those standing on the thinnest intellectual foundations. Actual scholars, the serious ones, sound uncertain not because they know less, but because they know more.

Nowhere is the arrogance–ignorance cocktail more obvious than when non-Jews lecture (implicitly and explicitly) Jews about Israel, Zionism, Judaism, or Jewish identity. It is astonishing how casually people assume these topics are just political talking points, neutral intellectual territory open to anyone with a Facebook account.

But they aren’t neutral. They are intimate, historical, emotional, spiritual, existential. They involve inherited memory, generational trauma, ancient connection to land, ritual, prayer, and a story of survival that predates every modern ideology. A non-Jew’s fight is not our fight. A non-Jew’s history is not our history. A non-Jew’s experience of the world — its dangers, its meanings, its threats, its hopes — is not the Jewish experience.

Are there non-Jews who take it upon themselves to learn deeply, rigorously, and respectfully? Of course. There are non-Jewish Zionists who study, read, ask questions, and listen. We Jews see them, value them, and truly appreciate them.

But they are the exception precisely because they put in the work. The overwhelming majority do not. Most non-Jews commenting on Israel or Zionism or even Judaism, frankly, have no idea what they’re talking about. They have not dived deeply into Jewish texts; they have not studied Jewish history; they have not learned Hebrew; they have not examined centuries of exile, persecution, and return.

And, therefore, most non-Jews should not lecture (implicitly and explicitly) Jews on these matters. Curiosity is welcomed; debate is not. Jews owe no non-Jew an explanation for our existence, our identity, or our homeland. Nothing here is up for negotiation, approval, or respect. And if a non-Jew thinks there is, then that is a form of antisemitism, if not in intention then in outcome.

What’s more, it is especially foolish to have strong opinions about issues that have no real impact on one’s life. I remember visiting my step-sister in Idaho a few months ago, and I attended a running club one evening. A few men there learned that I live in Israel, and almost immediately they launched into a lengthy discussion about Gaza and the Palestinians.

At one point, I asked them: “Why do you care so much? Whatever happens or doesn’t happen in Gaza or to the Palestinians has literally zero effect on your day-to-day life.” They jumped through hoops trying to explain why they should and do care, but here’s the reality: They live in Idaho. They vote with their local needs and wants in mind, not in consideration of some conflict thousands of kilometers away. Who are they trying to fool? It is the height of arrogance and ignorance to adopt strong stances on distant issues without any direct stake, all while convincing yourself that it makes you enlightened or morally admirable.

At the same time, the combination of arrogance and ignorance appears within the Jewish world itself. There are Jews who barely live a Jewish life — Jews whose engagement with Judaism consists of nostalgia, a few cultural symbols, and vague childhood memories — yet suddenly present themselves as authorities on antisemitism, Zionism, or the Israel–Gaza war.

There is the “cultural Jew” who doesn’t study Jewish texts or history, yet feels qualified to declare what Judaism “really stands for.”

There is the Jewish academic who is an expert in a completely unrelated field, but assumes their intellectual success grants them insight into Middle Eastern geopolitics.

There is the Jew who believes that being “anti-Zionist” makes them morally brave, when in truth it exposes how little they understand about Jewish history, Jewish peoplehood, and the inseparability of Judaism and Zionism.

Let it be crystal-clear to all: There is no Judaism without Zionism, and no Zionism without Judaism; this is not a political slogan, but a historical fact. Only the arrogant and the ignorant think they have a license to delete or modify history.

Certainly, much of this stems from a broader pattern of Jewish self-dispossession — the idea that distancing oneself from Jewish peoplehood is somehow a marker of sophistication. Many Jews have inherited a thin, fragile, or outsourced Jewish identity, and they adopt another culture’s narratives as though they are more enlightened or cosmopolitan than their own. But this isn’t enlightenment; it is forgery.

The deeper problem is that our society has stopped valuing intellectual humility. Saying “I don’t know enough about this” used to be a sign of maturity. Today it’s treated as weak and boring. We have become cultures that respect confidence more than competence, performance more than learning, volume more than accuracy. But the people who actually contribute meaningfully to the world are almost never the ones performing certainty. They are the ones studying, listening, thinking, reading, and acknowledging complexity.

What makes this all the more worrying is that history’s most destructive figures were almost always defined by this same fusion of arrogance and ignorance. The tyrants, demagogues, and ideologues who caused the greatest atrocities — they believed they possessed absolute truth while knowing shockingly little about the world, human nature, or the consequences of their actions. Arrogance gave them the audacity to impose their will on millions; ignorance prevented them from grasping the mounting costs until it was too late for them and everyone else.

Is this really the direction we want to revisit? The Far-Right romanticizes isolationism, yet isolationism fueled by arrogance and ignorance has historically been a fast track to high-stakes military conflicts. The Far-Left insists that everyone must conform to every aspect of its agenda, or else… — a stance that is nothing less than raw fascism. And we all know exactly where that road leads.

We ask ourselves why there is so much misinformation and polarization today, but the answer is apparent to anyone paying attention: the combination of arrogance and ignorance. It gives power to amateurs and sideline experts. It flattens history, distorts reality, and cheapens truth. A society that rewards such people is a society that becomes easier to manipulate and harder to repair.

The antidote is not silence; it is seriousness. It is the willingness to study before speaking. Of course, even the concept of “study” has been cheapened today — reduced to a quick Google search, a skim through a Wikipedia page, a glance at whatever one’s preferred media outlet publishes, or whatever the algorithm decides to serve on a social media feed.

And even for those who are serious about study, much of learning itself has become politicized and one-sided. Media outlets, social feeds, “educational” content, and even educational institutions’ curricula are often designed to reinforce a worldview rather than illuminate it. Facts are filtered through ideology, context is stripped away, and complexity is flattened into soundbites that serve a narrative, not the truth.

In such an environment, it is increasingly difficult to know what is real, what is accurate, and what is worthy of trust. And that is precisely why it is not only acceptable but wise to abstain from weighing in. Silence, in this context, is not avoidance; it is discernment. It is the recognition that pretending to know when you honestly don’t only adds to the noise, not the understanding.

And perhaps this is the most overlooked point of all: No one is forcing anyone to have an opinion. There is no moral requirement to speak on every issue, no prize for offering half-formed thoughts, no shame in saying nothing until you actually know something. Silence is not cowardice; it is often wisdom. The world would be far saner if more people recognized that the pressure to constantly opine is an illusion.

The fewer people pretend to know everything, the more room there is for those who truly understand anything.

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