In abstract thinking, the quality most readily defining the human species, the status of knowledge stands at the forefront of all considerations of lived experience. Even in the first systematic attempts to delve into the place of humans in the universe, knowing resided at the center of a network of ideas, values, and practices that were to guide lived experience. Most generally, human beings struggling for knowledge began with themselves; Socrates’ well-known dictum was “know yourself” [gnōthi seauton: γνῶθι σεαυτόν]. In conjunction with this self-knowledge, life should proceed through recognition of the “good” and the “beautiful,” which stand as lodestars to lead one to make proper and just decisions and act in a disinterested manner with regard to others, always with an eye toward the common good. These abstract elements supplied the means to judge human character, even one’s own. To modern ears, these universal “truths” may sound quaint at best, if not arbitrary and dishonest. But the good, the just, and the beautiful could only be conceived through careful reflection, a sort of intellectual work in progress in which perfection remains an ideal. In other words, the drive for self-knowledge was an ongoing activity in which the individual, always an actor permeated by a collective consciousness, struggled simultaneously to make sense of himself or herself and the world. This situation, of course, refers to a relatively pristine mental landscape before the concept of information was even a blip on the horizon. There were no means of mass communication and, generally speaking, no literacy, much less the mushy multiplicity of information ranging from facts, pseudo-facts, counter-facts, non-facts, not to mention outright and voluntary distortions announcing themselves under the banner of truth. Our technologies of information (re)production have thrown truckloads of sand in the machinery of knowing; the machines keep running, but their outputs no longer inspire widespread adherence or even confidence. Strangely enough, in this morass of claims and counterclaims, a consensus seems to be developing to assert that we are experiencing an “epistemological crisis,” in the words of former President Barack Obama (in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, “Why Obama Fears for Our Democracy”). The appearance of this Greek-based word – epistemology – in mass circulation signals far more than a new term for something already known. While the notion is relatively common in philosophical analyses and commentaries, as well as in more specialized discussions of knowing, in the current context it suggests a new take, even a new understanding of a problem pushed to the sidelines of the advancing social mind. Epistemology is knowing (episteme) and the reasoning or discourse (logos) leading to that knowledge. In current-day references in the wider media, the “logos” aspect is most often discarded, even as the “knowledge” half of the tandem continues to make the rounds in ever broader milieus. This latter lends itself to other combinations, embedded most frequently in a concern for the larger polity, and describes the field of combative forces vying for impact on the social mind, however illusory or deluded the judgments they promote. These proliferating references inevitably suggest an economy of knowledge that seems to have lost its way, whether because the “epistemic regime” has come into question, or the sanctioned participants of the “epistemic process” are no longer universally accepted (the “epistemic” formulations are drawn from David Brooks’ “The Rotting of the Republican Mind”). Given that clumps of intellectuals tend to read from the same batch of materials (a condition we all share), the center-stage recognition of the “epistemological crisis” can be traced back to Jonathan Rauch’s “The Constitution of Knowledge”, which links knowledge primarily to the institutions that surveil knowing, sifting real knowledge from bogus, what is legitimate from what is not, in all realms, from science to politics to humanistic endeavors. In speaking of institutions, one necessarily deals with “social epistemology,” and the present-day crisis constitutes in that sense an “epistemic attack,” a refusal to accept “epistemic standards,” a lack of recognizing an “epistemic honor code,” as Rauch rightly notes as the author of all of these expressions. In a similar vein, then, it is possible to advance that fifty percent of the American mind suffers from a presumed “cognitive decline” (a phrase from George Packer, “A Political Obituary for Donald Trump”) that no longer engages with unfolding knowledge about reality. These essays and interviews taken as a whole indicate a basic consensus about the relationships between knowledge and reality against the political backdrop of interwoven phony and reliable facts coursing through ever-expanding circulation of information. From this institutional perspective, knowledge would thus consist in a view of the world, of reality, that defines our togetherness and, if we follow the established protocol for producing new knowledge by submitting ourselves to the symbolic or executive powers that be, we can contribute to the ongoing evolution of human knowing. The “epistemological crisis” is real, and the vast quantities of ink and pixels proclaiming it in headier spheres have finally spilled over into less specialized media. But what if the fundamental problem has little to do with institutions and worldviews, that is, with states, religions, or associations of whatever sort? Ultimately, designating knowledge to be the issue may be a misnomer, a simple manifestation of a much deeper, more troubling element of the human psyche. Apart from select venues, few ideas rise out of the muck of information to guide evolving knowledge, and we have fallen back to an excruciating reliance on belief that has no staying power, being as fickle as the conditions that created it. Belief, in its own banal one-sidedness, has ushered in a simpleminded comfort straddling the divide between an unexamined past and a projected (and anxiety-ridden) future. In the exponentially growing network of the planetary mind, belief has moved to center stage by usurping knowledge, which has come to be considered just another form of belief. What one knows is filtered through belief. Ultimately what it boils down to is a confrontation between belief(s) – whose wholesale acceptance supplies comfort and certainty – and knowledge that comes about only as the result of sustained critical effort. Such mental work never achieves a state of completion and thus never allows for putting one’s mind to rest. These opposing forces of mind hark back to the epistemological crisis and to the Greeks who claimed self-knowledge as the starting point for knowing. In that sense, real knowledge – beyond opinion and belief – starts with examining one’s own assumptions. All beliefs must withstand critical dissection down to their very roots, a self-examination also known as thinking.