When they refuse to recognize your talent…

I created a phrase once and included it in an article that got published in a magazine here. Some years later, I met a high profile Singapore university professor at a private gathering who, without realizing it, uttered the phrase in a context to explain an issue.

From the expression on this individual’s face, he behaved like he was quoting a line from a William Woodsworth’s poem without realizing it came from moi.

Now comes the funny part: When I told this PhD super-genius that I am the author of the phrase, he became aghast and refused to believe me.

So, I challenged this National University of Singapore hotshot to find the same phrase elsewhere in the archives, knowing he wouldn’t be able to do so except in that particular magazine, which, incidentally, carried my byline. Yet, the individual simply refused to acknowledge me.

I was shocked by this person’s reaction, but I let it go.

Interestingly, I have met many people like this here: politicians, diplomats, museum heads, members of the arts scene and your regular office executive. Amazing.

But then, I am reminded of this famous quote (and I will acknowledge the author).

“There is a certain category of fool—the overeducated, the academic, the journalist, the newspaper reader, the mechanistic scientist, the pseudo-empiricist, those endowed with what I call epistemic arrogance, this wonderful ability to discount what they did not see, the unobserved.”

―Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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