Rhetorical? OK, rhetorically, it is knowledge that they have to fear. Specifically, the knowledge of good and evil. Topsy spoke from ignorance when she said she didn’t think “nobody never made me.” Those in our society who claim today that they are quite certain that “nobody never made me,” unlike Topsy, have possession of a wider range of knowledge. Somewhere in there resides, I think, the actual meaning of the story of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And, since we are speaking rhetorically without the benefit of the multiple nuances in which Sophists so love to indulge, we might do well to also recognize that there is a difference between knowledge and the possession of information.
Oh so beautifully said, dear YHAOS!
The problem with that nasty Tree is that it irrevocably binds a man to moral reality whether he likes it or not, and in a manner that he can never possibly evade nor change. It makes him responsible for his acts. This sort of thing can be highly inconvenient for folks disposed to atheism, nihilism, and other assorted disorders of our time.
For this "model" puts the criteria of universal Truth and Justice outside of human hands.
And oh, you are so right to draw the distinction between data and knowledge (or information). Today we are all drowning in data, but who actually understands any of it? The sciences become even more data-driven with the passage of time, and are themselves increasingly divided into narrower and narrower subspecialties. Who can understand anything under such conditions?
It seems the preoccupations with "parts" has blinded us to the Whole.
But I gather "edgy people" don't especially like to contemplate the Whole, let alone be prepared to allow that there's something divine behind it, beyond it, and/or at its very ground.
It seems to me "edgy people" live "on the Edge" largely because they refuse to engage this possibility (which seems to have been universally embraced by humans dating back as far as the records go; that is, until materialist/mechanistic descriptions of the universe began to take hold in the post-Enlightenment period).
As data, "edgy people" cannot be ignored. As information, they are of no help.
Or so it seems to me FWIW.
Thank you ever so much for writing, dear YHAOS!