This truth is at the heart of so many issues we face today.  We are a nation of people who are convinced we know, based on very short, biased snippets of information coming from various sources.  Yet, we are a nation of overwhelming ignorance when it comes to in depth information about important issues.  We have a wide knowledge base that is about as deep as a mud puddle.  It leads us great difficulty.  

For example, many of us know enough about Global Warming to hold very strongly held uninformed opinions both pro and con, and will engage in strong debates while never taking the time to really learn about the issues related to Climate Change.  This plays out socially, and politically.  We are most likely to vote for the politicians who parrot, and perhaps share, our ignorance on this and many other issues.  The truly frightening thing is that we have no way of knowing we don't know because we are convinced we are right.  Once we form beliefs, we defend them, no matter how shallow our evidential basis for the beliefs.

In my life, the issue of not knowing, but thinking you know has played out in my work with several states and client agencies.  It has become a trend in government to appoint very bright, ambitious people to supervise areas of government in which they have absolutely no in depth expertise.  These people often replace people who have put many years of hard work into building imperfect systems, but systems which have strengths.  When the new people come in, with a mandate for change, they destroy both the strengths and challenges of existing systems by making wholesale changes which fail to build on the practice wisdom of people with both years of experience and in depth knowledge.  

Some of the examples have been appalling.  The fiasco in my own state when it turned over all traditional welfare services to IBM, a company obviously very knowledgeable about the needs of people with no money.  Those of us who had worked with people in poverty immediately knew the system wouldn't work, in fact couldn't work, but the people who could have guided the State in the process were marginalized and it has led to hardship for families and extraordinary expense for the state.

However, it isn't just Indiana, it is a widespread governmental practice, especially at state levels, to put the bright and well intentioned, but ignorant in control of areas impacting all of us.  Then, those people are challenged to make changes far more rapidly than is possible without destroying the strengths of the systems they supervise.  In large part this comes from the fact that we are electing bright people with knowledge of how to get elected, business, and perhaps law, but who have  no education or knowledge in governing.  Since they don't know what they don't know, they hire others like themselves and the well meaning ignorance is propagated down the levels of the system.  When people who have knowledge and experience challenge the new people, they either learn to be quiet or are replaced with yet another new person with little expertise.

Lao Tzu said to know, yet think that one does not know is best.  The second best option is to not know and think that one does not know.  So it seems it is best either way to assume we don't know and ask a lot of questions when we are navigating the world.  I think this is especially true if you happen to be someone who is in a leadership position with little experience in your current areas of responsibility.  

The older I get the more I realize that I know little.  I have several opinions within my areas of experience and training, but those are just my perspective.  We need people in leadership to show less blind, ignorant certainty, and more wide eyed curiosity.  It is only by believing we don't already know that we concern.  All learning starts with a question.