A Better Year
by R. Anthony Arnold
January 2022
Now that we are in a new year, I want to pass on the most useful lesson I’ve learned and have reflected on over the past year. (Drum roll). I am fundamentally ignorant of the lives of people around me everyday.
Nothing better illustrates this to me than the commute to and from work.
If you passed me during your commute, what would you know about me? Would you know that I’m bi-racial, married, have 3 kids, am a nerd (Captain America is my favorite superhero). Would you know my views on anything, or that I host a podcast and am a writer? It’s biographical information, and it has some use, but it doesn’t amount to much, right? You couldn’t use it to create a very accurate mental picture of who I am, as a person.
Think about the cars we pass. Try to picture the hundreds, if not thousands, of people in those cars – the couples, or the families, the hopes, ideas and anxieties of those people, who fill those vehicles.
In addition to the stranger in the car next to your’s, every one of those strangers has their own internal monologue, their own stories about the world, and their own interpretations of facts. They’re looking at the same information you’re seeing, and somehow reaching conclusions that range from either slightly different to completely different. On some level, I think we all know this is the case; and we also know that even if you could somehow give everyone similar experiences, the people who emerge may see the world around them quite differently.
From a certain perspective our entire human existence seems miraculous. We’ve accomplished so much and have come so far, much of it together, despite the very real limits of our knowledge of each other. But, our shared ignorance should give us caution, because we use so much of what we don’t know to make decisions as though we do know.
The world demands that we judge others, for their lifestyles, their opinions, and their words, for their accomplishments and their failures. We’re told that not only must we have an opinion, but that our opinion carries sufficient weight to lift or sink the lives of others. All of this done in spite of the fact that we don’t know the first thing about the person we’re judging. Knowing that I like Captain America, for example, is not WHO I am.
And while you are doing this to others, they are doing it to you.
This is why we have to keep our ignorance at the front of our minds at all times. When asked to give your thoughts, you should always remember that you likely know very little; and the information you do know is certainly incomplete, flawed, and wrong in very significant ways.
There’s nothing wrong with giving a qualified answer, or simply declining to answer at all. Hedging your bets or sounding unsure isn’t a sign of weakness or cowardice. It’s a sign that you have internalized the fact that you honestly don’t know very much.
There’s a common pushback I’ve gotten when I’ve said stuff like this to people in my personal life. It typically takes the form of “How would this apply to (insert worst public person or celebrity ever)?” The specific answer is that people like that typically live in ways that are so public that they make judging their actions possible. That’s what it means to be a public figure.
Beyond that, we honestly shouldn’t care very much about public figures. I don’t mean that we attach zero judgements to them. I mean that I, quite literally, don’t think they matter all that much. Your life will not be shaped by the strengths and faults of the powerful and mighty. Your life will be shaped by the people who are honestly kind of boring, in the way we all are. People who have issues that are understandable and relatable.
In our lives, and certainly in our politics, we spend a lot of time worrying about the people at the very top of the pyramid. People to whom, by their very position, are difficult for us to relate. Their lives, their day-to-day existences, are so unlike ours that attempting to understand them typically results in frustrated wheel spinning.
So, as we begin a new year, what I’m proposing is that we worry less about those people. Instead, dedicate more of your energy to understanding people who are more or less parallel to you. Read and listen to interesting stories. Explore strange paths about things you find neat, and see where that takes you. Try to regularly acquire a little more insight about the world around you.
With every bit of hard earned knowledge you gain, you’re merely opening up another dozen paths to explore. And please remember one last thing, your knowledge should confirm your ignorance, not your biases.