Speaking with authority

But I know how people operate—I’m a person myself. (And yes, it takes one to know one.)  We look for short cuts. We want to see a resume before granting anyone a few minutes of our time. Their pedigree is important, and we check for letters behind their name. We have this strange and fanciful notion that there exists a direct relationship between the value of an idea and the calibre of the person who voices it. Great ideas arise only from great people, right? You’ll only harvest mediocrity from the mediocre.

Well yes, but only up to a point. You run a danger if you believe it verbatim. The thing is—while a correlation undoubtedly exists, you’re going to get into trouble if you believe that this is always the case. If you assume that the law is infallible, and you make a rule of disregarding people who lack the ‘right’ background, then somewhere along the way you’ll miss out. Conversely, you’re going to take a lot of rubbish aboard if you pay attention to everything uttered by everyone with a holier-than-thou reputation. 

Ordinarily, when one the great unwashed decides to speak their mind on a religious or spiritual topic, a defense mechanism leaps into action. Polite society kicks in its boot with, ‘Oh no, you can’t speak with any authority! You’ve got to prove that you’re an expert first. Only then will we listen. Go away until you can prove your own pudding. And scour your closet for any skeletons before you show your face again.’

This approach helps to winnow out the flotsam, I suppose, but the technique isn’t foolproof. You could all too easily throw out the baby with the bathwater. I reckon that it’s a cop-out to lend an ear only to orators suitably licensed. Doing so is an excuse not to do some thinking of your own. It behooves a person to look at the larger picture, especially if that picture paints itself as the largest one extant.  

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.