Rishon Rishon

Misled by knowledge

John Ray brings us this precious quote from Joseph Sobran:

"He who is unaware of his ignorance," writes Richard Whately, "will only be misled by his knowledge." And that is the trouble with the liberal, the socialist, the Communist, and a dozen other species of political cranks who have achieved respectability in our time: they disregard so much of what is constant and latent in life. They fail to notice; they fail to appreciate.

He adds his own comment:

It might be noted that it is a common finding from survey research that conservatives are happier. See e.g. here. One might perhaps ask how conservatives could be both wary and happier but I think that to ask that question is almost to answer it. Wary people are more likely to avoid the heartbreaks and disappointments that overconfident people experience. And who is more overconfident than a Leftist with his insouciant prescriptions about how the whole world should be re-organized? Because they tend to be better at dealing with the world realistically, conservatives are happier with the same world that deeply dissatisfies the Leftist -- who blames the world for his own failures at comprehending and dealing with it.

A while back, I spent a few posts wondering about why so many smart people are so dumb. John wrote me, "I think it's simpler than that: Success leads to arrogance and it takes a strong character to resist that". I didn't find it particular convincing at the time, but now I think I may have misunderstood him. Perhaps he was referring not to social arrogance (which is also an issue) but to intellectual arrogance: a lack of humility regarding what you (think) you know. I often use the aphorism, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" - meaning that one who has a little knowledge is tempted to think it is a lot. A variation of this is: "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Or, as Socrates is purported to have said, "I know more than you, because you think you know something, whereas I know I know nothing".

A lot of smart people are vulnerable to being seduced by their beautiful ideas, which ties in with my previous two posts. Instead of Talmudic reveling in the interconnected multifaceted holy-profane reality of the world, they retreat into their private, or collective, Ghost Dances.