A Little Knowledge

     Some people know a lot about a little, others know a little about a lot.  He knows a little about a little. 

     He's ignorant, but he isn't stupid.  He knows he doesn't know.  He just doesn't want to know what he doesn't know.  He runs from knowledge.

     Try to tell him something he doesn't know, he recoils.  Persist, and he dismisses you.  Or he turns his back and walks away.  He really doesn't want to know.

     What does he know?  I don't know, but he speaks in slogans.  He's a walking motivational poster.  They downloaded the company line into his larynx.  At first I thought he was the ultimate company man, a total tool.  I'd never heard anyone actually talk in press release before. 

     Then as I got to know him, I began to think otherwise.  He gets by okay, but he doesn't excel.  He never stretches.  Stays well within his comfort zone.  A surface skimmer, not one to dive in.  He thinks so far inside the box, it's not even thinking.   He doesn't even bother to restate the obvious.  He just states it. 

     I changed my view, started thinking of him as Mr. CYA.  After all, you're not responsible for what you don't know, and he's careful not to know anything, so he's never responsible. 

     Today I'm not so sure about the Mr. CYA part.  I sense something more inert inside his head.  It isn't an act.  He isn't consciously sticking his head in the sand.  No, he really believes in what he says.  His slogans?  They're not slogans to him.  Emblazon them on a tote bag or print them on a lapel pin, and in his mind you sanctify them.  They become the tried-and-true secrets of a successful life. 

     Life is simple, at least for him.  You people with your inconvenient facts and your counter-facts, your multi-level analyses, your shades of grey, your on-the-one-hands and on-the-other-hands, you just complicate things.  Needlessly.  Better minds have already thought this through.  So stick with the program and everything will be just fine.  Don't worry, be happy.

     And he is happy.  He's safe and secure in the warm embrace of his certainty.  He sits in bliss watching the rest of us wig out.  He's straight and true while we zig-zag back and forth.  With all our questioning, all our doubting, all our worrying, is it any wonder he's so dismissive, so condescending? 

     He probably thinks we're the ones who run from knowledge.

     He's wrong, of course.  We can't all outsource our brains.  Someone has to think, to question, to doubt, to worry.  It's just not him.  Not his department.  He's carved that out of his job description.  I'll bet he's carved it out of his life description. 

     He fascinates me, so I study him.  A life built on delusions and denials, that's quite a trick to pull off.  I don't know how he does it, but he certainly makes it look easy. 

     Some days I even envy him.  I wish I could just turn off my mind, relax and float downstream.  But I can't.  I see too much.  I drill too deep.  I throw myself into what I do.  And I care too much.  My curse is to always worry.  I'm never secure enough to rest.  It isn't easy, this life I lead, and I certainly make it look hard. 

     No pain, no gain.  That's sounds like something he'd say, except he gains without the pain.  Meanwhile I'm losing.  My pain ages me prematurely.  My hair falls out, my stomach-lining burns, my blood pressure rises, my arteries harden.  I don't sleep.  And my mood grows darker while he comfortably strolls on the sunny side, always on the sunny side of life.

     The unexamined life is not worth living.  Ignorance is bliss.  Which is it?  At this point, I'd rather not know. 

Comments

[MindSpin]

Is it ever so simple as either/or?

Persisting in willful ignorance, however psychologically comfortable and safe (I won't use the word "bliss" here), is less than being fully alive, no?

But being fully alive, comprehending complexity and contradiction, need not preclude our experience of bliss now and again.

To ignore bliss where it may be found is also to shortchange a life, for bliss is not really found in ignorance after all, but in perceiving beauty and good in the midst of everything else.

Life isn't, at least for me, one thing or another. I can know bliss and pain and contradiction and incontrovertible trouble all in a single day. The big secret is that one doesn't cancel the other out. Joy doesn't cancel pain, and pain doesn't cancel joy. They coexist in this mutable and mortal world, and one is as real and vital to knowing what there is to know of this life as the other.

I don't think your life needs to be examined less, only lived more. Anesthetizing your brain, as does the man of whom you write, would help nothing at all and is impossible besides. You just need to acknowledge an additional dimension; you need to further complicate your life with joy. Be utterly present to it where it may be found, and don't smush it with all the rest.

Life is not either/or - perceiving preponderance is oversimplification - it is all at once and this and that by turns.

Choose some bliss today, great or small, carve out of a space for it, and give yourself to it wholly.

[R J Keefe]

One of the fascinations of this site is its glimpse of the interaction of corporate structure and an inquiring mind - not a pretty picture, perhaps, but an irresistible one. Ever since I realized that today's executive suite is (unconsciously) modeled on yesterday's aristocratic court - a tourney of position-jockeying that produces little of real value - I've craved inside stories, and this one is a peach. While you're wondering whether you'd do better by imitating, were it possible, your brainless colleague, I'm marveling at his managing to hold onto a job. But of course: he is the perfect courtier. You don't say this, but I expect that he presents his superiors with a blandly flattering image of themselves. He may even, with his party line, make them feel better about themselves. They may really depend upon him! Whereas, you - !

[Peter L. Winkler]

I was waiting for the punch line: he's George W. Bush.

[Oorgo]

I sometimes wish I could do the same, turn off the brain. I sometimes wish that I could be the happy tool of corporate infrastructure, simply incorporating the mission statement, the party line. Taking a moment to stop and think is what the unthinkers are afraid of, that you'll see their hare-brained scheme for what it is.

Ever seen the Kids in the Hall sketch Shovelling Coal ( http://mytherapy.com/discussion/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1636 )? That's me, I'm Bruce McCulloch

[George]

Evil, that's what it is evil. Evil is too broad to be captured in one particular characterization, but one facet is simply militant ingnorance, the determined energy to not know at all costs, to remain, no matter what the cost to oneself or to others ignorant, ignorant of the most obvious truth. That's a little knowledge.