I’m not much concerned with debating the merits of building a wall along the Southern border of the US. Frankly, I don’t have enough information to really declare a public opinion on the thing. But there is a wall that I’d like to talk about today. This is a wall which, in my opinion, is far more important than one on our Southern border. And I would argue that this wall has already crumbled.
I’m not quite sure how to label this wall. Perhaps it’s the wall between the teacher and the student. But that doesn’t seem strong enough. It might be better to call it the wall between the expert and the novice. That wall has crumbled.
It’s not as if there really isn’t such a thing as an expert or a novice anymore. Rather, it is that the world has flattened in such a way that we all assume because we’ve been able to Google something that we’re now an expert on that particular topic. Just because you can watch a YouTube video on how to change the thermostat in your car it doesn’t mean you are now an expert in auto-mechanics. We are saturated with knowledge. But knowledge isn’t the same as understanding. Mortimer Adler spoke to this decades ago:
We do not have to know everything about something in order to understand it; too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few. There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding. (Adler, 4)
And that was written before the internet. When Adler goes on to describe where this problem came from you’d almost think he was talking about social media and blogging, if he didn’t give his era away by mentioning cassettes. Speaking of the packaging of truth he says this:
…the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and ‘plays back’ the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think. (Adler, 4)
And that’s the problem. We’re a nation of experts on everything but we’ve thought about nothing. There once was a bit of a wall between the expert and the novice. But now we have WebMD to tell us we have Ebola and help us challenge our doctor’s diagnosis of the common cold.
There’s an old joke about a nuclear engineer (or some such professional) who charged $100,000 to fix a specialized machine. When the company got the bill they were flabbergasted by the cost so they asked for an itemized bill. The engineer informed them that it took $1 to push the button and $99,999 to know which button to push. Now you can Google which button to push and save your $99,999. That’s what knowledge will do. But a lack of understanding will blow the place up—because you only thought you were asking the right questions.
In my opinion, this issue is where a good deal of our disunity and discontent comes from. We’ve all but lost our ability to be humble learners. When was the last time you heard someone humbly differ their opinion to another? When did you last hear someone say, “Person X likely knows better than me, so let’s ask them?” We don’t do this anymore because we can pretend to be experts by asking Siri all our pressing questions. But this is knowledge. It’s not understanding. Tearing down the wall between expert/novice has led to this.
So what do we do?
There is no rebuilding the wall. And I’m not even sure if that’s the best thing to do. There has been some good to the tearing down of the wall. I’ve personally benefited from it. I wouldn’t be blogging if I didn’t think there is benefit to a no-name like myself publishing his thoughts. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a darker side to this beast.
The best answer, in my limited understanding, is to pursue humility. Every last one of us. Stay in our lanes and acknowledge areas where we have knowledge but maybe not full understanding. Learn to defer. Humbly acknowledge that you’ll never be the smartest guy online. And go from there.
Pursue humility. That’s the answer. A wall won’t protect us from ourselves. But grace will.
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Photo source: here
