I used to teach a class at McGill called “Advanced study in behavioural disorders.” It was a course that gave students a chance to get some fieldwork experience in their final undergraduate year. Each year I would tell students the following in their first class:
“When you don’t know something, you don’t know something. When you learn something, you think you know everything. When you learn a lot, you realize how little you know.”
I would tell them this because mental health and psychology is a field in which far more is unknown than is known. In all such speculative fields, those who have no knowledge have a tendency to defer to the experts. Unfortunately, these experts may only know a little more than the lay public. It is how they handle the unknown that distinguishes the great thinker from the pseudo-intellectual. The public is always more vulnerable to being misled in such circumstances. (I wrote about this theme in an early column called Gurus).
As Erasmus wrote, (and Tom Waits sang in the song Singapore) “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
The story of the lobotomy, which I wrote about in a post last month, is one example of what can happen when we defer to experts. Another involves autism. The Freudians used to believe that it was caused by “refrigerator mothers.” Complete nonsense. There was no evidence whatsoever. All that existed was the opinion of “experts.” I wonder how many families were destroyed by these experts.
The implications of what happens when we want to believe too badly can be extremely serious. I keep the column fairly light but I do allude to tragedies such as Jonestown and the Heaven’s Gate mass suicides. The desire for answers is what makes many people trust leaders (or salesmen, or charlatans, or gurus, or miracle cures, etc…). Blind faith is never good.
Seeking answers in the dark
(Source: Journal Métro; Chercher des réponses dans l’obscurité. November 18, 2008)
Isn’t it great when you suddenly understand something? It’s like turning on a light in the middle of the night. You become oriented and everything you want is easy to find. That’s what knowledge does for us. It is a powerful drug. Unfortunately knowledge does not always provide the answers we seek. And wanting those answers too badly can sometimes be a major detriment to true knowledge!
The desire for knowledge: A good thing
The desire for knowledge has led to great advances in our lives. Think of what transportation and communication were like only one hundred years ago. A desire to understand how the body works has allowed medical science to double our life expectancies and for infant death rates to be extremely low. Most great achievements in science, such as Mendeleev’s periodic table of the elements or Einstein’s theory of relativity, start with the desire to know. Our lives would not even remotely resemble what they are today without the advancements in science and technology that human curiosity has produced.
Unfortunately the desire to know things has a major drawback: it does not always produce answers. When such is the case, we have little option but to fumble around in the dark. Although no one likes to face gaps in understanding, our only choice is to accept them. The alternative can be far worse.
The desire for answers: A bad thing
The problem with wanting answers too badly is that we become prone to believe things that are not true, simply because we want them to be. When this happens, there is always someone ready to exploit us. Sometimes only our wallets are affected, such as when infomercials tout the miraculous powers of their cleaning product or the incredible healing powers of a crystal. Sometimes the consequences are more serious, such as when a cult leader convinces his followers that mass suicide will bring them eternal bliss.
This desire for answers is also what encourages some of us to vote for politicians who promise the impossible, to trust our finances to the latest investment guru, or to abandon imperfect, but tested, medical treatments for the latest cure from the neighbourhood quack.
The desire for knowledge is a great human strength that will continue to turn on lights. But without a healthy dose of skepticism, the answers produced by wishful thinking will only darken our understanding.
Tagged as blind faith, wishful thinking.
Posted in Human nature, Random thoughts.
Posted on 01 Dec 2008
