People are messy, and once you’ve got some years under your belt, it’s really not all that hard to find some fault in what they say or do, in their attitudes or beliefs about things. If you pay much attention at all to someone, it’s likely that it won’t be long at all before you know better than something they’re doing, thinking, or saying. And at the moment you realize that you know better, if you’re like most people, you’re very likely to make some irrational leaps in your mind. You can easily make the unjustified mental leap from “I know better in this…” to other thoughts and attitudes such as:
- “I know better in this…therefore, I know better about everything than this person does.”
- “…therefore, I’m a better person than this person is.”
- “…therefore, I know pretty much everything, more or less, about the topic in question.”
- “…therefore, I should be a teacher of, or an authority on this topic.”
- “…therefore, we should start a new organization based on this.”
It seems that it’s hard for most of us to remain completely objective about it, and to tell ourselves only “I know better in this”, rather than to inflate the matter into something untrue.
I had an experience that was somewhat related to this a few years back when I read about some silly way a teacher handled a situation. I said something along the lines of “This teacher is being stupid”, to which my wife stepped in with a more refined version of my statement: “This teacher is being stupid about this.”
Ah, right! That was better. It was more specific, and wasn’t over-generalized, as had been my knee-jerk response to hearing about whatever was the stupid thing the teacher was saying or doing. And just as I had over-generalized the teacher, being messy in my approach to sizing up the situation, we can do that when it comes to how we size ourselves up. I could easily have thought, “I’m a better teacher than her.” Or “I could do better than her.” But really, like Kay’s correction had implied, the only thing I really knew about the teacher was that she had been stupid about this. And I had no idea whether she was stupid about other things or not.
But there’s something more to be considered: I had no idea whether I was being stupid about anything, either! It’s easy to carry an attitude that “If I were wrong about this, I’d know it.” But in reality, we’re often wrong about things without being fully aware of our errors. (At least one study I have read about suggests that we may have an inkling about some of our errors, even if we are not very motivated to pay attention to that inkling, and investigate it.)
In other words, if you reach that point of awareness about somebody else’s messiness where you arrive at the realization that “I know better in this.“, you may well be right about the fact that you know better about that thing, but this doesn’t not suddenly transform you from a messy person into an un-messy person.
Let’s Talk About Organizations
So let’s suppose that you uncover an error in an organization, and that you buy into all five of the conclusions on the list above. So you set up your own new organization, based on the thing you know better about. What’s to keep that new organization from being messy like most human organizations tend to be? Did you suddenly come to know better in everything? Have you made the leap from “I know better in this” to just plain “I know better (in general)”?
And have you somehow become immune to having someone else find (actual) fault in what you’re doing in your new organization?
Well, no, you haven’t. If even you’re proud enough to find it desirable to think that way about yourself or our organization, that doesn’t make it the reality.
The Gap Trap
What I’ve just done here is to express my Gap Trap idea in a new way. It’s the idea that we often get caught up in the gap between where we used to be and where we could be by now if we weren’t so eager to form a new camp and put up a shingle and make a name for ourselves at the first opportunity. If we have come to know better in this or that, such that we think we need to part ways with a previous association, what makes us think that our new discovery is the only one we really needed to make? What makes us think that may not be several other corrections that we need to make, but haven’t implemented yet, or even realized? And what makes us think that our new organization isn’t going to have the same problem, with its own members figuring out some of the errors that the organization either hasn’t yet figured out, or isn’t yet willing to admit?
I can see how there’s always room for more learning. What’s troubling here is this bent toward driving a stake in the ground (either literally or figuratively) and building monuments to our own glory, where we spend more time thinking the kinds of things on the list above, rather than continuing to learn. That troubles me about us.
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment
Paul. Romans 12:2. ESV.
It’s been several years now since I started studying cognitive error and cognitive bias and cognitive miserliness and moral miserliness. I am now more convinced than ever of just how radical was Paul’s command here―just how rare and otherworldly a way of thinking it is to regulate one’s own self-view according to reality. We have quite a hard time seeing ourselves in a reality-based way, as this general article about positive illusion demonstrates. And we also have a hard time when considering how we may compare with other people, as this general article about illusory superiority demonstrates.
We are messy in these ways (and others), and it seems that very few of us will be willing to do the wholesale work to clean ourselves up. Perhaps we’ll do it on a point here and there, but who among us has the conviction to clean up everything about himself?
Very few, indeed.
And I have to wonder just how much we disqualify ourselves from the kind of religion Paul was preaching when we lack interest in gaining a reality-based view of ourselves, and of our own knowledge, wisdom, skill, ability, attitude, etc. He didn’t put it out as a mere suggestion, or a nice-to-have. No, it was a command. And he’s not the only one who said such things:
“Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.”
Jesus. John 7:24. NIV.
If we were more interested in judging everything (including ourselves) correctly, we’d be more likely to understand just what a tall order that is. And I think we’d be so busy working on our own understanding of things, and comparing notes with our friends (who are similarly interested in judging correctly), that we’d be a lot less likely to start new camps, of which we can be the leaders. I think we’d be less likely to find ourselves thinking those five things on the list above, and much more likely to make some real and consistent progress in our learning, rather than just assuming ourselves at a higher level than we are because we’ve figured out an error that somebody else doesn’t see yet, or is unwilling to change.
People are messy, and we are people. And if we’re going to clean ourselves up, we’ll discover that this is no casual task, but quite an involved one. And I think we should be busy with that task.
“…make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.”
Peter. 2 Peter 3:14. NIV.
It’s so easy to make one effort―to fix one thing―and then to think we’ve got it made, and ought to be the teachers and leaders and authorities. And who knows? Maybe we should be. But certainly not at the expense of failing to “make every effort”. Indeed, if there’s anything that needs to be taught, isn’t it this ethic that says: “make every effort”? Otherwise, we just form ourselves into competing camps, each of which has chosen what it’s going to be correct about and what it’s going to be in error about.
But who among the camps is teaching “make every effort”? Aren’t the camps’ positions more honestly something like “Make these efforts”? Don’t the camps generally pick and choose what they want to specialize in (whether they’ve got it right or not)?
But I think I see a different spirit (Spirit?) in Jesus and Paul and Peter, where no holds are barred―where there is no limit on trying to improve oneself. And that seems quite the radical thing compared to the prevailing attitude of our day.
Surely, we know better than others on several points, but where is it written on the holy scriptures that life is a competition? Is it not enough for each of us to improve himself without having to compare himself (rightly or wrongly) to others? Why, then, should we stop at having made one improvement?
