100 monkeys

The the bottom line is that the correlation between the stature—academic, professional, or moral—of a person and the importance of his or her words is not absolute. I insist that anyone could come up with a useful creation. You get a hundred monkeys typing and eventually they’ll string together the complete works of Shakespeare. And do you know it’ll read just as well as the original.

Accept for now that anyone, no matter what their roots are (or where they’re wont to root about) could very well come up something fine and dandy. In that case, let’s dispense with having people pass tests, roll out their background for inspection, prove that they are beyond rebuke, demonstrate their purity, dig out a qualification, present a clean rap sheet, wave around old money or spill blue blood. 

Imagine if you will a criminal with something on his mind. Say that one day a villain on death row receives a genuine flash of insight. The crimes that he has committed are now just water under the bridge, because now he knows! He has discovered the answer. And out of the turned-over-a-new-leaf-goodness of his heart, he wishes to share it. 

How far would that person get? Not much beyond the bars of his cell, I warrant. It wouldn’t wash, would it, no matter how watertight his ideas were? His jailers just aren’t going to listen, not to mention anyone else.

From whom would you expect to receive revolutionary news? If you take the pre-judgemental approach, then you’ll only ever listen to a Nobel Prize winner, Rhodes Scholar, saint, or to Dog Itself (or one of its come-down-to-earth incarnations). Hey, that really rather limits the field, wouldn’t you say? You may be waiting a while. So I’d suggest that you not shoot the dowdy messenger. Don’t dismiss him just because, in your eyes, he’s not dressed to deliver.  Give the pizza-man a chance.