Perfectionism
21/06/2022The Superior Feels Inferior
31/08/2022 The Danger Of Knowing Too Much
Curiosity
Curiosity is the drive or energy that often is activated within us when faced with something we do not know or understand. When we realize our ignorance, it bothers us and a need is born in us to study, investigate and experiment, thus opening up the learning process, whereby we accumulate knowledge.
Did you know there is a danger in accumulating a lot of knowledge? That the accumulation of knowledge can lead you into a mental trap and make you assume a very counterproductive attitude towards life?
Imagine that you enter a completely darkened space, for instance a cave, and taking with you a lighted candle. If you place the candle on the floor inside the cave, what you will be able to observe is its flame and around it a field of light. Where this field of light ends, darkness continues.
Let us assume that the flame of the candle and the space that is illuminated represent our knowledge, all that we know and understand, while the darkness represents what we do not yet know, in other words, our ignorance.
When humans become aware of the boundaries of their knowledge and realize that there is still much that they do not understand, their curiosity is often mobilized, and by way of the learning process they accumulate more knowledge. In our image, it is like the candle flame gets bigger and the field of light expands. A part that before was darkness (ignorance), is now illuminated (learned and understood).
This is all very well. It is good that our curiosity helps us to learn more and more things. But here we have to observe a very important phenomenon: if we now examine the limits of our knowledge, we realize that we now know much more than before, but also that, in knowing more, the boundary with the unknown has grown. We become aware of that there is now much more that we do not know than there was before. So, the more we know, the greater our ignorance!
The Socratic Wisdom
The famous philosopher Socrates lived in ancient Greece some 2500 years ago. Among all the wisdom he shared with the world, there is a phrase that is specially well known, (although some scholars doubt that he ever said this, that it was said by somebody else): “I only know that I know nothing”. We have often heard it, but maybe we do not totally understand what it really means.
The sage was referring to two things: first, we must face the unknown with a totally free and open mind, without the influence of judgments, conclusions or theories based on previous knowledge; and second, that we must compare knowledge and wisdom. This is important in order to avoid believing that because we have knowledge about something, we have "everything figured out" or that we are the owners of the "only truth". According to Socrates, this arrogance and conceit is a highly counterproductive attitude in life.
Maybe you know people who have “gotten it all figured out” or presume to know the “only truth” because they have studied a little more than others?
(Some have not studied at all). Let us look closer at this need to “inflate the ego” or what psychologists call the superiority complex, so that we can then understand its destructive consequences. We may even arrive at the conclusion that we all, without realizing it, fall into this trap from time to time.
Creative Arrogance
Arrogant people do not always base their feeling of superiority on the fact that they know more than other people. Human beings have been very creative at inventing reasons for feeling “better” or “more” than others. For example, there are people who think that having a lot of money and material possessions makes them superior beings. “The more I have, the more I am”, they think “and as I have more than you, I am more than you”. Sometimes they are neither rich nor knowledgeable, but they consider that the color of their skin is the “superior” color. Let me know if you have read any scientific research that proves that some colors of the rainbow are better or worse than others. Doesn’t it seem absurd?
Other people feel superior because of their family name, or where they live or because they work in a management position. How many managers, vice-presidents and company directors (men and women) cannot help walking through the office with their chests puffed up because they feel superior? They think themselves so important that they cannot even say “good morning” and they are disrespectful to people, because they consider the “plebeians” to be beneath them.
Have you ever been in a meeting with your work colleagues in order to solve some problem, and the boss has seen “the truth” and knows the “only way” to solve it? What happened to communication? Or creativity? Or motivation? They were suppressed, of course. Because the “owner of the truth” has the huge defect of not wanting (or not knowing how) to listen. Why listen if he has “gotten it all figured out”? He has already decided that there is nothing more to learn.
The Inferiority Complex
The superior is superior only in relation to something inferior. Therefore, the superiority complex cannot exist without the inferiority complex.
This we shall look at in the next installment.
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