Confessions of a smart-ass …

Every time I begin to think I’m smart — really smart — I usually end up regretting it.

I ought to be smart, I tell myself — after all, there’s a bunch of letters after my name that say so. When that happens, I remember C. Wright Mills, a mid-20th century sociologist who coined the phrase “second-hand world.” Mills wrote:

The first rule for understanding the human condition is that men live in second-hand worlds. They are aware of much more than they have personally experienced, and their own experience is always indirect.

The quality of their lives is determined by meanings they have received from others. Everyone lives in a world of such meanings. No man stands alone directly confronting a world of solid facts. …

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