August 6, 2008

• Ignorance is not Bliss

  I remember back during my freshman year in college I discovered something that quite surprised me.

  I figured out that I didn’t know anything.

  Oh sure, I was somewhat academically knowledgeable. I could do calculus in my sleep. I could quote many a scene from Shakespeare in regular conversations and Plato’s dialogues were my bedtime stories.

  But outside of that basic academic competence I was ignorant beyond imagination. I would get into conversations with people and they’d randomly bring up stuff, like matters of popular culture, references to actors, movies, music, songs, books, politics, history, television shows, celebrities, clothing, art, sports, manga, anime, etc., etc. etc.  And you know what? I had nothing to say. I had no idea what they were talking about. Reference after reference I had never learned anything about.

  My ignorance went further than popular culture too I found. In numerous situations I found I lacked knowledge of the proper etiquette or expected behavior. I would invariably find myself having no clue what to say, when to say it, how to appear, where to go, who to talk to, etc. etc.  And there were even various facts of life that I was similarly unaware of. The kinds of things people did with their time. The things that mattered to people.

  My ignorance of the world at large was perhaps the worst. I was what one might call the quintessential American idiot. In that, anything about any country outside of the US was more or less outside of my purview. If they didn’t teach it in the one year of World History I took in High School I didn’t know it.  Of  course that made it rather interesting since my first roommate was from China and a next door neighbor was Korean and yeah it was a *very* multicultural school. In my defense, I was more sensitive of cultural issues than some of the people I met, but only because experiences I have had due to my race had caused me to be taught to be particularly cautious about such matters.

  Even my abstract academic knowledge, which I thought was my expertise, was, at that school, really only ordinary.  That is, your average Math major could run circles around me in Mathematics and your average English Lit major knew a thousand times the references to cultural literature. 

  Or so it sometimes felt. 

  Sometimes I think a lot of them were just faking it, but eh who knows. To be sure there were many many people I met who were fountains of knowledge from the most obscure to the most obvious. And to be even more sure even the most ignorant of entities were significantly more aware that I was.

  The whole experience made me feel very small. I felt many years younger than I was.

  Of course people were very nice about it. This was not a place where you are likely to get ridiculed for your ignorance. People were too “mature”. But their tolerance and accepting words while their face was filled with shock and surprise only made it worse. It made me more quiet and less likely to volunteeer anything for fear anything I might say might reveal some deeper ignorance.

  So I tried to catch up of course. I spent hours and hours surfing the web trying to learn about cultural references I had somehow “missed”.  And I would download movies, television shows, music.  But in the end it was a losing battle. I could not keep up with my academics and my own personal quest to fill the gaps of my ignorance.

  At some point I just started lying. I hated the awkward pauses in the conversation when I revealed that I didn’t know something or hadn’t heard of something, so I just pretended that I knew what they were talking about. I’d just nod and smile and use the speakers and audience reaction to gauge how I should react. At first I did a very pathetic job of it and I’m sure everyone I talked to knew I was lying and that just probably confused them even more. I mean why lie about somethign so trivial as whether or not you’ve seen some popular TV show right? Sounds almost psychotic.

  But after a while I got pretty good at it. I could seem more knowledgible than I was. Mostly the trick was being quiet and letting people assume whatever they wanted to assume. I’d then later go back to my room and try to research again and sometimes later in conversations I’d know just enough to make the chance comment here or there that made it seem like I knew what I was talking about. Haha I even got good enough to use this in class to be able to “fake” having read the material.  Well that was ok cuz most of the students hadn’t read the material for a lot of those classes.

  Anyway, lying just doesn’t feel good. Especially trivial lying. And keeping track of the lies became annoying. And it didn’t really solve anything.  So I was sick of it all after my freshman year and stopped altogether. By then though I guess I had “caught” up in a lot of matters so there was less need.

  But even to this day I find myself significantly more oblivious to the world than most people I interact with.

  For example, I know nothing of sports. And I mean nothing. I couldn’t tell you which players belong to what teams or what teams belong to what cities or even what teams belong to what sports. I don’t really know how most sports are scored. Golf and Bowling are particularly incomprehensible to me. Baseball and Basketball I can handle the scoring of. Just the post touchdown stuff of football is a little weird. I’ve never watched a game of Soccer or Hockey so beats me there. Tennis my older brother painstakingly explained to me or I still wouldn’t get it.  As for other rules, I don’t really know any of them. I’ve heard of the truly legendairy players like Pete Sampras, Wayne Gretsky, and Michael Jordon. But other than that I don’t know anybody. I only learned who Manning was when I moved to a city where he happened to be a particularly big deal.

  I never really understood sports fandom. Or most any kind of fandom really.

  Music I am similarly ignorant about. Name a band or a musician or a popular song and chances are good I haven’t heard it or heard of it. Most classical artists I don’t recognize by any of their works. I don’t know the musical scale, can’t read music, have never played an instrument (not really).

  I could go on and on and on I think. But whatever.  I won’t bore you.

  But even so, these days I just am much more inclined now to readily admit my ignorance and not give a damn.  Most of the things most people care about just don’t interest me as much as they do other people. It’s just something I’ve come to understand about myself. And that doesn’t bother me at all anymore.

  Well it doesn’t bother me *much* at least. I still am always striving to increase my knowledge about everything even all the stuff I don’t really care about. I have a basic level of curiosity avout everything. But I’m never particularly enthusiastic about it. I mostly want to know because ignorance is not bliss. It’s rather annoying really.

  • 11:14 am
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