Vonnegut and the Failure of Inexperience

I was was reading a post on James Lileks' blog regarding Vonnegut's latest crazy old man talk sent fron from my buddy Jay, who must in fact be the definition of the spew blog addict, and someone who always will find something interesting to eat lunch to on any given day. I wasn't familiar with Lileks until then and found him making good points in a very annoying way. I found it interesting that what the difference between my perspective and his simply that he never really like any of Vonnegut's books, while I lived off his stuff for years. I found the latest statements which basically commending suicide bombers sad and misguided, but in particular because it was so antithetical to everything I knew of him. Sure, he was antiestablishment to the hilt, but he really seemed to be saddened by war mostly because of it's collateral damage. Now he is basically applauding the most obvious form of intended collateral damage. And it goes from there. The trouble with his perspective is he speaks from a position of inexperience. It is funny how as I get older and actually draw my behavior almost entirely from my own experiences rather than what I was told, I can start to see that, at least when the author gives it away anyway. I find myself often talking with great authority over things I have only read about, as if it was such a feat to read a book or article, or worse, watched something on Discovery channel (which by the way has both made pop science ubiquitous and debased simultaneously, but I digress.) This is funny, because I could be just as helpful passing on knowledge if I just was humble and gave credit solely to the source, which is also a good thing if the source happens to be wrong. What I am beating around is simply so much chatter is out there that is probably from armchair analysts who might be a clever writer but are commenting on something they have no business pretending to be the authority on. Admit it, we all do this. It gives us power since of course knowledge is power, and what better way to weild it than to break it out at cocktail parties. Maybe this is just because I have so much of the nerd ethos in me, but I see this going on accross the board. Sports guys are all about this. It is part of the currency of the gaming vernacular. The odd thing is that following sports is all about just being an observer. Granted, the experience of watching games, and then later watching games and knowing more and more about what is going on and who is doing it, is learning by experience. Still the difference between a former athelete and a regular person behind the mic can make all the difference.