A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing
22 January, 2012
The more I see, the more I know. The more I know, the less I understand.
So sang Paul Weller on his 1995 song ‘The Changingman’. Of course the sentiment expressed has been around in various forms for centuries, existential in nature as it is.
What is knowledge? Is it, as Orwell averred, power? Or is it wisdom? Don’t ask me. I’m nearly 32 years old and I’ve been in some method of formal education every year since I was four (give or take two years) and recently I’ve felt as if my combined knowledge and experience of life amount to virtually nothing, that I’m a callow fool.
It’s said that your prowess at playing the game of pool is at its peak when you’ve imbibed some alcohol and your self-awareness and inhibitions melt away. You become more relaxed and instinctive, at least until you realise you’ve reached this state. Perhaps life is like this; when you’re young, you barrel through existence, confident in your own abilities and adamant that you have a Unique Selling Point that the world has just yet to discover. And then, like Joe Strummer said, you realise you’re just smart enough to know how dumb you are.
From then on it’s downhill. In some respects, second guessing yourself is a good thing because it stops you from failing, but in others it’s a bad thing as it prevents you from trying. This is the doubt that’s begun to gnaw at me. It affects everything I do, from my ‘music’ (note inverted commas, insisted upon my super-ego) to playing football to writing. It’s not quite fear of falling, it’s something distinct. A fear of having my redundancy and uselessness thrown into sharp relief.
There have been a few occasions recently when I’ve begun to seriously doubt my own judgement. My on-going war against the vapid overuse of the word ‘stunning’ and its declensions for one. I loathe how it appears to have found its way into the style guides of the English speaking media worldwide. I hate how it’s used routinely and dispassionately, and a word that implies the user has had their breath taken from them should never be used dispassionately. Its ubiquity dilutes its effectiveness, the way a ‘fuck’-fuelled rant soon descends into waves of meaningless consonant sounds. No-one appears to share my ire.
More concerning, I have developed an intense dislike of the BBC’s modern reimagining of Sherlock Holmes. I continue to watch due to my long-term love of Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective, but more often than not during the six 90-minute broadcasts, I have found myself bored, repulsed by the over-acting and tired of the slightly self-satisfied air of the production.
And then I check the wires to find that the programme has received almost universal acclaim. People I follow on Twitter rave about it. People plan their lives around watching the live broadcast, or ensuring no-one spoils their enjoyment of the watching their recording. Critics and professional journalists (even the ones I respect) declare it to be the best thing on TV. The best thing in years.
And this is where I start to worry. Am I simply being contrary (which is not entirely unlike me) or worse, am I not intelligent enough to appreciate the programme? Why do I find myself swimming against the tide here? I could certainly list a number of reasons, developed objectively, why I think the programme isn’t much cop, but I lack the self-righteous sense that my opinion is right and everyone else is wrong that I would have had even ten years ago. All I have learned in life is to doubt myself.
