Bulldozer00's Blog

“We grow up being afraid of our own ignorance and terrified that our ignorance may show. Over time, we’re conditioned to appear as “knowledgeable” as we can, while carefully concealing the limits of our understanding.”

Does the above quote, snipped from Peter Ralston’s “The Book Of Not Knowing“, ring as true for you as it does for me? I think it’s one of the top reasons why I spend a lot of time trying to keep abreast of developments in my field and advancing my programming and design skills.

You see, I often feel uncomfortable when someone starts talking about a topic that I’m ignorant of. I used to (and still do, but much less frequently) “pretend” that I understood what was being said so that I wouldn’t appear “stupid“. Now, I rarely hesitate to say sentences like “you lost me in the dust” or “I have no idea what you’re talking about” – regardless of the social consequences. I’ve realized that “not knowing” is the natural state of being – which means that we can’t avoid dwelling in it no matter how hard we try. Trying to fight spending one second in the state of not knowing is as ludicrous as a bird trying not to fly or a fish trying not to swim. Fighting one’s natural state of being always has a cost; psychological, physical, or both.

“Pretending to know” is a full time activity in hierarchically structured organizations that work with, and create, non-physical knowledge. Since knowledge is king, the higher one moves up in a hierarchy, the more pressure one feels to delude oneself into omniscience (e.g. when was the last time you asked a question that a superior didn’t whip out an answer to?). This unnatural behavior is exacerbated by the fact that all members in a hierarchy are either conscious or unconscious co-conspirators in the comedy.

I’m a conscious and willing co-conspirator. How about you?