By: Tommy Druen
Guest Columnist
My high school had just over 300 students. It was the only public school in the county. Needless to say, we weren’t accustomed to success. Talent isn’t only found in larger places, but our school simply had a smaller pool from which to draw.
Yet, our basketball team punched well above its weight. In my four years, we won the district tournament and the All “A” region tournament three times each. I’m proud to say I was a part of the team.
For the sake of full disclosure though, I wasn’t the reason. I was the guy at the end of the bench. I didn’t see the floor unless the outcome was already decided. Once, my coach asked me to keep stats during the game. That moment made my role crystal clear. Our odds of winning were better if I had a pencil in my hand, not the ball. Still, I never resented it. I knew our chances of winning were better with my friend J.P. Blevins on the court, averaging 30 points a game, than me, who likely averaged more fouls than minutes played. I accepted my role. My desire to play was outweighed by my desire for the team to win.
I thought of that acceptance recently while watching a 2018 documentary called “Behind the Curve.” It follows a group of people who genuinely believe the earth is flat. More troublingly than just that fact, they believe that governments, scientists and teachers (and the Freemasons, of course) continue to conspire to hide this “truth” from the public. I’ll admit I dozed off halfway through, so I never quite grasped what the supposed endgame of this conspiracy might be.
What struck me though was not one of these flat earth believers was a scientist. None had relevant degrees or worked in any related field, although one had won a virtual pinball tournament. However, they were all certain they knew better than experts who had earned the advanced degrees and dedicated their lives and careers to astronomy.
It sparked a question that I think of with increased frequency. Why do people believe they’re right when experts say otherwise?
We see it everywhere. Social media has made armchair experts of us all. There are entire industries built upon this. Podcasts, YouTube channels, and blogs become the mediums where people confidently opine about topics they barely understand. And they’re wildly popular. We’ve created celebrities, and fortunes, out of demonstrated ignorance.
Not long ago, a woman lectured me about how the Kentucky’s General Assembly “really” works. I’ve spent 25 years working for the legislative branch while her job isn’t even remotely related to government. She wasn’t unintelligent, but she was unwilling to acknowledge her own ignorance. When I politely corrected her, she questioned my motives for “defending the system.”
What’s more troubling is intelligence has itself become suspicious. I know brilliant people who are graduates of Harvard and Princeton. When they ran for public office, they deliberately hid those credentials. Why? They feared it would cost them votes. And I suspect they were right.
Isaac Asimov captured it perfectly. He said, “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
What troubles me even more than ignorance itself is that expertise is being treated as evidence of corruption. The more qualified someone is, the more time they’ve dedicated to something, the more suspicious they become. It’s inverted the entire logic of knowledge.
My basketball team didn’t succeed because of anything I did on the court. But I like to think I contributed in other ways. I made my teammates better in practice. I cheered them on during the games. I didn’t create discord or undermine team chemistry. I simply knew my role.
You don’t have to be the leading scorer to be valuable. But good teams are made up of people who play certain roles. Currently, people are playing positions in society they’re not prepared for, ones that treat hunches as expertise and opinions as knowledge. We could be so much stronger if we simply found our own roles and played them well. That’s not a weakness, that’s wisdom. And that’s how our society wins.
