Repeat After Me: "I Don't Know"
Someone close to me often gets quite irritated when I answer a question with "I don't know." I have to explain that if I don't know something then that's the only honest answer I can give.
It got me thinking about why "I don't know" is regarded as a bad answer. I don't know if it's still the same, but when I was at school, knowing stuff was very important. Often, knowing stuff was more important than understanding it. As long as you could trot out the correct answer then everyone was happy, and you could feel proud because you knew! And the shame of not knowing was rewarded with the wearing of, albeit imaginary, a dunce's hat.
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The teachers used the 'in group' - 'out group' thing as emotional blackmail to get students to cram all those bits of information into their heads. If you knew, you were 'in', if you didn't you were 'out'.
Later on, a similar thing applied to peer status. If you knew the right cool words, if you knew what was hot and what was not, then you were part of the in-crowd. Not knowing that stuff relegated you to the ranks of the nerds, the lamers, the losers. You looked up to people who knew stuff, and tried to show you knew stuff too, so 'lesser mortals' would look up to you.
The leader of the pack never said "I don't know". That would mean losing face. Leaders are supposed to know. But what to do if you don't know? Make something up, of course! Make it sound like you do know. It doesn't matter if what you say is bullshit as long as you sound like you know what you're talking about.
How many leaders, or would-be-leaders, can you think of who would answer "I don't know"? None that I can think of in the field of politics, or religion for that matter. Ah, yes. Theologians. They really take the biscuit (if not the piss) when it comes to knowing the unknowable. First they magic knowledge into existence like a rabbit out of a top hat, then they defend it with the certainty of 'one who knows'..
These days, I find it difficult to take seriously, or trust, people who are absolutely certain about the knowledge they posses. If history teaches us anything, then it is surely that we are often wrong about what we think we know. Knowledge is provisional.
I'll concede that, "I don't know," on its own is a bit sad, but "I don't know but I'm going to find out," now that's the mother of invention.
Cosmik Debris by Frank Zappa
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