Errol Morris, the brilliant NYT writer asks in his thought-provoking series The Ansognosic's Dilemma: are we able to know how incompetent and stupid we are?
Morris suggests we are not. He quotes psychologist/researcher David Dunning (for whom half of the Dunning-Kruger effect is named) that we are simply not very good at knowing what we don't know.
But Dunning takes it further:
"That's absolutely right. It's knowing that there are things you don't know that you don't know. Donald Rumsfeld gave this speech about "unknown unknowns." It goes something like this: "There are things we know we know about terrorism. There are things we know we don't know. And there are things that are unknown unknowns. We don't know that we don't know." He got a lot of grief for that. And I thought, "That's the smartest and most modest thing I've heard in a year.
People will often make the case, "We can't be that stupid, or we would have been evolutionarily wiped out as a species a long time ago." I don't agree. I find myself saying, "Well, no. Gee, all you need to do is be far enough along to be able to get three square meals or to solve the calorie problem long enough so that you can reproduce. And then, that's it. You don't need a lot of smarts. You don't have to do tensor calculus. You don't have to do quantum physics to be able to survive to the point where you can reproduce." One could argue that evolution suggests we're not idiots, but I would say, "Well, no. Evolution just makes sure we're not blithering idiots. But, we could be idiots in a lot of different ways and still make it through the day. People tend to gravitate to what they're competent at, and then they write off the rest of the world. Knowing what they don't know, but not fully owning what Rumsfeld, famously referred to as the unknown unknowns."
When I taught Experimental Psychology at Kean University, in order to illustrate principles of perception and awareness (and that there can be one without the other), I assigned the students to go to watch old cartoons of Mr. Magoo. The Magoo cartoons portrayed an elderly man who could not see well at all and would walk into the wackiest situations constantly misinterpreting them, cognitively, emotionally. The fact that he refused to recognize his problem just made things that much worse - and funnier. Most often he would walk out not only unscathed, but enriched. Let's not forget that the Magoo character (narrated by Jim Backus was a millionaire (He has been referred to as the myopic millionaire)
Magoo is the cartoon incarnate of the idea that you can see without seeing or more accurately, that you can perceive without seeing and without apparently knowing. A typical episode would have him walking onto an airplane, thinking he was sitting down to a theater performance. While looking for the bathroom, that he can't see, he ends up walking out of the airplane in flight. Somehow, he finds his way back in, inadvertently collaring a would-be hijacker.
As an informal experiment, I had my young children (as well as the college students) watch this dated series. They laughed at Magoo's fumblings. Psychoanalysts know that laughter nearly always indicates that you have connected with the unconscious. One might surmise that there's more than a little bit of Magoo in all of us. We recognize ourselves in him. The irony of Magoo being ignorant and rich (read: rich because of his ignorance) taps into a cherished archetype that transcends many cultures: the archetype of the rich fool. (think Isaac Bashevis Singer Gimpel the Fool, Forest Gump)
We see evidence of that in politics. Jimmy Carter was known as one of our most intelligent presidents (reportedly a 175 IQ) and yet many saw him as victim to it. The same is being said of President Obama: he is a geek, a wonk, intelligent, but with deficient "gut" intelligence. By contrast, Reagan (rumored to have had an IQ of 105) was widely seen as an inspiring, and effective president despite the fact that much of what he said made no sense. It was almost as if he was seen to be more powerful by virtue of his "not-knowing."
Some people have suggested that psychotherapy is a way of "knowing more." True enough, but the treatment room is crowded with all kinds of delusions and scotomas (blind spots). Transference and counter-transference, the twin pillars of the analytic cure are chock full of deception and delusion. The success of psycho-analytic treatment may in fact be in helping people to not know.
Many a patient will enter psychotherapeutic treatment with a dilemma: should I get married, should I not, Should I change careers or not? They collect research, go through different options and feelings with the and still they find it difficult to decide, to make a decision.
The analyst may affirm support for any decision, but the patient nevertheless feels pressured to "decide." The dilemma persists. They live a blinkered existence. Alternately they attack themselves for their indecision or make the claim that knowing "more," will help them make a decision.
But even after acquiring considerable knowledge it may be difficult to decide. He pressures the therapist to "help him decide." The therapist may refer the patient to a psychotherapy group "to help him make a decision."
The identical dynamic ensues. A painful scenario then unfolds where the group member feels "pressured" and seeks to assert his autonomy and separateness, by "not deciding." He may invoke his "sacred" right to "think" about it for "as long as he needs to." He doesn't know yet, he insists.
But he has already thought about it and the group experiences his need to "think" as a covert way of shutting them out...a stalemate.
In another more successful illustration, a young mother habitually brought her dilemmas to the group sessions. Often it would have something to do with her children. What school should she send them to, which camp? After recounting enormously detailed options, she would ask the group to help her make a decision. She would then proceed to discount everything anyone had to say. One group member pointed out that underlying all of her rejecting comments were actually statements: "I am different" or "I am special" and "you can't help me."
Her professed ignorance or willful stupidity was a camouflage, the group asserted. Her need to know for sure, her compulsive evidence-collecting was a defense, an activity was in the service of maintaining her position. In this sense, her "stupidity" and helplessness was a resistance.
But what about the group -- the group need to be analyzed as well, the woman countered. The group had been meeting for many years and had adopted the position of "knowing." They knew. They just knew all the time who was full of crap and who was not. What people should do and what they shouldn't. They knew.
But what did they know? "Oh a lot," said one of the group's sages. They have incredible life experience and had been through so much separately and together. But that was their resistance. They claimed to be neutral, but underneath it all, their "knowledge" and "wisdom" was a way of serving the group and keeping themselves together. Could they be smart enough to acknowledge, deeply acknowledge their stupidity? "Now that would be real wisdom," she said heatedly. Progress was made.
Psychotherapy and particularly group psychotherapy can offer people the always-revolutionary idea that they are in a relationship with each other. Infinite pleasure with people is possible while both knowing and not knowing. Despite all attempts of mankind to annihilate each other symbolically and literally, we have not yet succeeded. That we have succeeded with each other was sometimes because of our smarts, and just as often despite our smarts. At the end of the day there is still love left.
The late analyst Hyman Spotnitz, used to say, (perhaps paraphrasing Winston Churchill): "...Never, ever, ever, ever give up"
