If that's your level of understanding, I would say you don't really need to be paying more attention. You should just understand your specific level of ignorance and recognize that you'll need to defer to the opinions of experts on whatever topic you hear about in the future.
If you refuse to learn about current events, and more importantly the context of those events in history and so on, then you have no choice but to trust experts that know more than you. In this context, expert means people that study/work in a field their entire life and are backed by the larger community of experts - that is to say, they're not at risk of losing their license or being removed from their employer/academic institution.