I think the point I was trying to make was that we have a huge range of skills, knowledge and experience. Branding people as "passive" - or "stupid" for that matter - because they don't have a skill or knowledge base you do is unhelpful. They have other skills, know other things.

Of course, one might put value judgements on which things are 'worth' knowing or being able to do (personally I'd consider a working knowledge of Shakespeare as superior to a knowledge of the current state of Brad and Angelina's marriage, for example) but there is almost always a situation where your knowledge is useless while the other person's is not.