Going and telling - All about self!

Producing ideas, subconsciously and essentially, linked to disseminating them and, in the very core of it, it makes intellectuals self-promoting. In fact, all production of knowledge is essentially narcissistic and I think there is nothing wrong with that.

As bad as it sounds, it is exactly what an intellectual is: A person, who dedicates oneself to "know" and "think" more than others. This is exactly why an intellectual generally promotes her own ideas, constantly and aggressively. If you are a writer, an artist, a photographer, a scientist, a philosopher, a poet, or anyone who frames, visualizes, mixes, tests, questions, criticizes knowledge and ideas, then you have (and should have) more to tell... Not only, it is an urge (at least for me) to talk about my ideas, but it is (and should be) expected by the society.

Think about the social scientists. They (we) claim to know why people behave/vote/socialize/drink (you name it) better than the people themselves. Well, I think, we do know better. I personally would judge why my mother votes for secularist party every single election, not by her own words, but by the academic research on the voting trends in Turkey.

Or, think about this photographer, Jim Lo Scalzo's recent project called "Evidence of My Existence." It is a very personal account of his life. In the narrative, you hear about the hardships he has had with his wife or his clumsiness in the first fieldwork he did in India. If it was somebody else, I would not even bother to look or listen to what he has to offer. But, NO! Jim Lo Scalzo is not a random guy. His experience as a traveler and a photographer surpasses mine (and many others) and I am more than willing to listen to what he has to say.

There is a thin line between sharing an interesting , well developed, sophisticated and above all, coherent way of looking at the world and simple, low-quality self-promotion. In the seemingly endless and deceivingly egalitarian world of internet, the line is even thinner. (see a very interesting article about this at http://www.edge.org/discourse/carr_google.html)

The question is: how to differentiate between different types of knowledge production around us.

For instance, there are a lot of similarities between the scientifically well-respected (but not uncommonly despised) The Edge web site and equally or more popular Islamic creationist web site of Harun Yahya. They are both essentially promoting specific ideas (ideologies). They are both very sure of their own value. They both think that issue of evolution is extremely important to discuss. They both have significant amount of content. But, I would never visit Harun Yahya's webpage, but has a RSS feed for The Edge website. Why?

The rational answer to this question remains one of my greatest puzzles?