vol. 4 issue 2
Greetings,
My son once quipped that I approach conversations with a knife and fork.
What can feel to others like hostility as I pierce, cut, and dissect whatever it is I seek to understand, is really just my deeply curious nature, transmogrified into a defense mechanism that demands knowledge, lest I be taken off guard, or worst of all, humiliated.
I’ve never meant anyone harm. In truth, I have harbored a life-long insecurity that I am not taken seriously for my intellect and so I seek constantly to prove I am smart.
Why am I telling you this?
Because Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s stunning gaffe made while accusing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of spying on other members of Congress by way of a “gazpacho” (cold tomato soup) police force instead of a Gestapo (Nazi Germany secret police) has me thinking about ignorance.
Until I learned to harness the power of my ignorance, it was something I feared would prove I wasn’t good enough to be included among the elite smart kids, which I so desperately wanted because they were the ones who got all the kudos I craved.
Contrast that with Rep. Greene, and other recently elected members of Congress like her, for whom ignorance is a credential. Their willingness to routinely declare outrageous absurdities without evidence, such as there being a force of secret police skulking the halls of Congress, signals that they are the cool kids now. That Ms. Greene is not literate enough to realize her provocative statement was also moronic, might have led to a good giggle over the thought of real-life Soup Nazis on Capitol Hill, but the arrogance of stating ridiculous things as though they are fact, with apparently no curiosity as to whether what she said is actually true, demonstrates how easy it is to use ignorance to bully others. In this case, it’s the powerful elite who are on their back foot.
Reclaiming curiosity
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, ever since the start of the pandemic, when I observed how POTUS 45’s bullying rants against China, calling covid the “Wuhan flu”, immediately resulted in the scientific community shutting down any meaningful public conversation about the possibility that the virus did actually escape a lab there – even though a conversation already had been taking place before the pandemic occurred, centering on the potential threats that lab might pose. I already wrote about that in this post where I mused about conspiracy theories, so feel free to go there if you care to read why I remain open to the possibility of a lab leak.
The point I am making here is that curiosity in both politics and science, has become a casualty of tribalism. That’s a problem.
It doesn’t matter whether ignorance is weaponized or hidden behind, if we’re not willing to examine whether what we are saying is true, then it is easy for us to be manipulated out of exploring and innovating.
So, I’ve been wondering. What does it take to reclaim curiosity? Reflecting on my own relationship with ignorance, I submit the sacrifice has to be the fear of being an outsider.
‘Most likely to ask a question’
We moved a lot when I was a kid, so my obsession with knowing everything was driven partially by a fear over gaps in my education. But always being the new kid, I also was desperate to fit in, seeking what would make me “in the know”, able to enter the “inside circle”. The only way I knew how to engage was to lead with my strength, which for me has always been my curiosity. Paired with a learned penchant for a lack of boundaries, however, that led to what seemed like the interrogation of my peers on the playground or by the lockers. My teachers saw me as the ass pain who always had her hand up – not to give the correct answer, but to ask or challenge what everyone else said. In high school, I was voted Most Likely to Ask a Question, so there’s proof.
A big-mouthed outsider with no opinions of her own, yet a willingness to challenge the opinions of others, I spent my youth and young adulthood lonely and depressed.
As I’ve aged, I have learned how to disarm others with my genuine curiosity rather than lead with my fear of being seen as ignorant. I keep my fork and knife hidden, so to speak. This was only possible when I realized my outsider status is a superpower.
When I was a clinical medicine reporter (how that happened is another story for another day), I was in the position of asking lots of questions so I could report on the latest data. That would have been difficult enough, given my fear of being seen as a fraud by highly credentialed experts who, upon seeing no string of letters after my name, might wonder how on earth I’d gotten in the door to their sophisticated medical meeting, but that was not all.
I also had virtually no scientific training to speak of, so I often was also in the position of having to have basic biology and physiology explained to me. It was excruciating to be so open about my ignorance, but I had no choice: I was a broke, recently divorced single mother, and if that wasn’t humiliating enough in a room full of successful academics, then losing a good paying job for literally being too stupid to do it would have destroyed me.
Leveraging not celebrating ignorance
So, I coped. I put my autodidactic skills to use, and taught myself as much about medicine, and about reporting on statistical data, as I could. And I just asked questions I thought my readers would want to know. It wasn’t long before I started to understand that my not knowing what others assumed I knew – my outsider status – meant I was actually asking questions that were provocative and productive because I really did want to know the answer.
Often, the conversations were deep and vulnerable because I’d asked a question that wasn’t meant as a “gotcha” but was genuine, causing my interviewees to re-think what they thought they knew and either find fresh confidence in it, or reconsider what they might be missing.
Soon, I began to succeed exponentially. I got better at my job, I got better assignments, I got better paid. Eventually, I started seeing trends across several fields, leading me to create this publication. This was possible because I was asking questions and drawing conclusions the experts themselves were too far into the trenches to see.
I got comfortable with the fact that my ignorance is real, but so, I am relieved at last to admit, is my intellect. Having sacrificed needing and wanting to be a cool kid, “in the know”, and on the inside of the set, whatever that set is, my ignorance now can be creative, not foolish. It’s definitely not hostile. And I don’t have to prove that I am not ignorant.
Actually, in considering how to bring back curiosity, especially in the minds of powerful people, I think I have come upon a useful formula:
Outsider (ignorance + curiosity) = actual power.
Everyone is ignorant of something. There is no shame in that. The shame is when we choose to celebrate or fear our ignorance rather than leverage it. That’s just stupid.
If you’re going to tell the truth, at least make people laugh. Otherwise, they’ll kill you. ~Oscar Wilde
And don’t forget…
NEW PODCAST!!!!!
While the docu-mental podcast is still temporarily on hold, I am so very excited to share that on February 17, news analyst and astrologer Elisabeth Grace, and I will debut our new podcast Off the Charts, offering you aspects on newsmakers and current events like you will get absolutely nowhere else.
The podcast is part of the re-fashioned Ensouled: The Journal of Cultural Astronomy.
Be sure to subscribe to Ensouled so you don’t miss it!
Peace,
Whitney
You’re right: You are so smart. Springtime for Hitler! One of my favorite songs in one of my favorite movies. 😬