We Think We Know Everything
The world’s biggest problem may be that people are so sure of themselves. It seems increasingly clear to me that no one really knows anything for certain, as Socrates is said to have said. We publish books about how we think our world works, which few of us read, yet the volume of knowledge we do not possess, individually and collectively, staggers the imagination. We accept theories and believe certain things to be true, but when belief becomes faith we become committed to an idea and no long question it. Eventually, inevitably, our faith in the ideas of man is shaken by new information.
The more my mind opens to the vastness of what is unknown to self-aggrandizing bipedal cell-phone-addicted mammals crawling about a tiny blue marble in an ever-expanding universe, the more I see the evolution of modern man as a stagnant process, its progress measured by technological, but not intellectual, advances – we are good at making things but repeat the same mistakes, millennia after millennia.
The body of scholarly work we have managed to accumulate about the Universe is given barely more respect than an IKEA assembly sheet – most of us don’t understand it, we are afraid of it, so we ignore it. We bury groundbreaking, promising ideas in scientific publications no one wants to read. Politicians and voters kill innovations the minute they realize someone will have to pay for them and that they will compete with inefficient, destructive yet profitable business models. We cling to the familiar, come what may.
We think we don’t need scientists and scholars, for we are plenty smart enough without them; so smart we spend much of our time showing others how intelligent we are. We polish resumes and update LinkedIn pages. We build galleries of our lives on Instagram so others may admire us. We Tweet ourselves and post memes that telegraph our intelligence.
Well, if the human race is so smart, why do we fail at so many things and create so much catastrophe? We like to say we are ok but those other people – in other states, other countries, other political parties, those people who don’t look like us – they are the ones messing things up for everyone. They are to blame for violence, environment disasters and starvation. They are ignorant, hateful and selfish. They are the enemy. The problem with those arguments is that we all live on a round, overcrowded planet where everything and everyone is connected. There is no them, there is only us – one big, dysfunctional family that doesn’t get along. We can’t even blame politicians for our troubles, for as short-sighted and self-centered as many of our “leaders” are, they represent us quite well.
What if, for all our good intentions, we took the wrong path eons ago, when we let our status at the top of the food chain go to our heads; nothing breeds arrogance like success. What if the thoughts we deem the most solid – the ones that, when all else seems uncertain, we know are true – should be seriously questioned? What if the things we do best could be done much better? What if they shouldn’t be done at all? What if our side is wrong and the enemy’s side is wrong, too?
Guy D. Johnson is a writer and marketing communications professional. Previously an animation studio owner, daily newspaper editor, reporter and photographer, volunteer fireman, railroad bridge gang helper, FM radio station underling and cave guide. He has lived on farmland trusted to the sun and rain; atop a wooded hill; beside great rivers; upon an arid, high plateau; and at the subtropical coast of the Gulf of Mexico. For 20 years, he worked and wrote in New Orleans.