Louis Roney: Ignorance

Our friend Francille pulled a small paper out of a fortune cookie and read: “Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.” Confucius said, “Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.”

A beautiful woman reminded me the other day that everyone is ignorant about something or other. We are all surely ignorant about more things than we are smart about. Just because I once knew several dozen operas in several languages does not mean I was an expert cave spelunker or a culinary pro in the kitchen! The trick was for me to find people who would pay me enough to do my thing, singing, to allow me to hire people to do their things that I couldn’t manage. Isn’t that about all that we all do all day long? Isn’t life a long series of trade-offs?

When I said I was singing for a song, it was to a great degree a true statement. I didn’t sing with the guy at the local filling station or the lady in the dry cleaning store. Those things require some trading around before agreeable swaps in an agreeable currency can be used. A marriage can be, in many ways, a swaps of desirables. When the swap is no longer mutually pleasing, then lawyers may get into the act and do their shockingly expensive thing. Long marriages are advisable, and economical as well.

We have all probably had the experience of trusting “experts” who did not turn out to be just that. The person laying currency on the line should be able to determine whether his job has been satisfactorily done — and if it isn’t, he had better be good at ex-post-facto persuasion. When the marriage ring is already in place, that persuasion can cost a pretty penny, or two, and the lady who received all those luxurious gifts may not be quick in wanting to give them back. It occurs to me that those same gifts that got the gal in the mood to get hitched, may often not be bargaining factors when an unhitching is in the air.

The insurmountable ignorance of people certainly outweighs their conglomerate knowledge. The experts they hire become their agents in the matters they deal with. When these agents’ expertise is inadequate and therefore unacceptable, there may be nothing to do but to pick up the pieces — and/or go see Judge Judy!

Most free advice is probably worth no more than one pays for it.

Abraham Lincoln said, “A lawyer’s time and advice are his stock in trade.” This truism may apply just as well to one’s marriage partner. In a sense, one’s whole life can be seen as a long series of trade-offs that occur every time an important decision is made.

Top executives in the world sell only their expert opinions. When and if they are too often wrong, they’re soon out of business.

Being really good at something is a requisite in modern-day lives. A really good football coach can read his expertise on the scoreboard, and a good dentist can read his prowess when his patients smile.

Accomplishment is the name of the success-game.

Advertisements are premature bragging, something to make an alluring promise in a desirable trade-off. Ads themselves won’t do the job any more than saying “I do” will make a good marriage. It’s the follow-through that counts!

As I sat in many a university faculty meeting I thought, “Ignorance has its virtues. It is hard to overestimate the ignorance of some people.” I concluded, “Without it, there would be mighty little conversation.”

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

As Somerset Maugham quipped, “It wasn’t until quite late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, ‘I don’t know.’”