"Acceptance speaks loudest of all."

What better demonstrates cluelessness than KnowingBetter? I suspect that it's not the knowing that contributes to the sense of cluelessness but the bettering. KnowingBetter seems to set up a sort of competition, a one-up, which easily sours any encounter. The intended betterment encourages a kind of resentment from the one being bettered at, or from the one being battered by the attempted betterment, for no one actually achieves the objective of demonstrating that they KnowBetter. They achieve at best a tentative nomination for inclusion in the Asshole Hall Of Infamy instead, for turning what might have been a collegial sharing of knowledge into a pissing contest.

I've noticed that I feel smarter when in the presence of a genuinely smart person. Their intelligence seems to infect me, too, and we both feel better for it. When in the presence of the merely knowledgable, I often catch on that I've been cast in the role of the stupid one, and neither of us are better for that. The merely knowledgable mechanic leaves me feeling inept. The merely knowledgable store clerk leaves me feeling lost. The merely knowledgable salesperson leaves me feeling as if I'd been taken mean advantage of. In each case, my interests seemed ground up in the far greater need of the knowledgeable one, whose very existence seemed contingent upon proving me to be a sort of stupid, as if I could never learn.

Successful relationships seem built upon each party stepping back and down rather than in and up. Attempted dominion detracts from whatever else might attract two individuals into collaboration, neither demonstrating any deep need to show off or show the other up. I believe that this back-down presence demonstrates a soothing self confidence while the in-up feels like the sort of in-your-face-ness wounded self esteem insists upon. When my wellness depends upon diagnosing another as some form of inferior, I'm more demonstrating my wound than my superiority, no matter how powerfully demeaning I might seem to others. Whenever I'm KnowingBetter, I seem to be demonstrating my worst.

I can know plenty without rubbing anyone else's nose in my knowledge. I can recognize inexperience in another without rubbing their nose in that, either. KnowingBetter seems like an absence of the acceptance of the way things are. Ten thousand other metrics exist for comparing one to another, knowledge never being the particularly defining one. I might think you're stupid but my attempts at proving your stupidity to you probably makes me seem stupider to you than you even seem to me. Knowledge seems a fickle possession, one poorly suited to public demonstration. Actions speak louder. Acceptance speaks loudest of all.

©2018 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #CluelessSummer, #PureSchmaltz