Every field of human endeavor has its experts: those individuals who, through the right combination of talent, practice, and experience, acquire the highest levels of knowledge and skill within that field.
It is also one of the most basic observations about life and learning that the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. As such, those who know the most are also (often) the most keenly aware of their own limitations, and are therefore the least likely to comfortably inhabit the identity of “expert.”
And yet, plenty of people proudly inflate their own status to that level, be they charlatans seeking unearned power and influence, or earnest practitioners of lesser abilities, who are simply benignly unaware of their own limitations (if such ignorance can truly be benign). It doesn’t help that we live in a world of “resumé inflation”, where everyone is an expert in everything, simply by virtue of putting those words on a piece of paper.
Of course there are also the occasional “true” experts who act as provocateurs — or simply have raging egos — who may be aware not only of their own limitations, but also of the even more extreme limitations of everyone else around them, and who leverage that knowledge for greater personal gain. But we have another word for these people. (Assholes.)
The challenge then is this: how do we identify those on whom we can most rely to share their “expertise”, if the true expert refuses the label and the self-identified expert is anything but?
I think the answer is simple: we find experts by the admiration of their peers.
Unless they’re all assholes too.
A note about the photo above: That’s Pete Prodoehl, a guy I don’t know much about but whose website I’ve long been aware of, and who does not appear to self-identify as an expert (except in the seemingly tongue-in-cheek way of this photo). But I found the photo on a post on a douchey motivational website for aspiring entrepreneurs, encouraging “expert” self-identification, while not bothering to identify, credit, or link to Pete’s website. Take all of this as you will.
Comments
3 responses to “Beware the self-identified “expert””
Nice post. I especially like your mentioning of the asshole. In one of the grad classes that I taught a few years ago, we pondered the question: what’s the difference between a productive troublemaker and an asshole? I like asshole as a classification; you’re not incompetent, you’re not bad, you’re just an asshole. Now, what’s the difference between an asshole and douche? We need a taxonomy….
On another note: There are lots of discussions going on in pedagogy/teaching methods about how to transform teaching to respond to/engage with online technologies. Many people have suggested that teachers are no longer experts, but guides; they don’t give the answers, but provide some tools for figuring it out yourself. I wonder if shifting how we view and value those people with experience (as guides and not experts) might help with the problems that you describe.
The difference between a douchebag and an asshole is that an asshole is a sociopath. A douchebag is just self-absorbed.
Interesting. I think I might have to write a blog post about the meanings and origins of asshole and douche/douche bag. Of course, this post would also have to reference “white hipster douchebags” too…