Most of all, we’re experts in our own narrative, our feelings, our lived experience. No one has had that but us, and while it might be unexamined or instinctive, we’re the experts. Experts in who we associate with and what we choose to believe.
And many of us are experts in what we do all day. Our craft and our profession. We’ve been doing it for a long time.
Suddenly, as a spiral of media, world events and science all come together, we’re confronted with a range of things we might not be experts in. Statistics, long-term thinking, epidemiology, semiotics, constitutional law, technology, the scientific method, history and environmental science.
One option is to get smart about each of these things, just as we’ve learned other important skills in the past. That requires the energy to pay attention and the humility to encounter new ideas and realize that we’re not an expert yet.
Another is to simply pretend we’re experts, conflating our (well-earned) feelings with actual expertise.
And the third is to simply shrug and ignore it all.
It’s never been easier to learn what we need to learn. And it’s never been more urgent that we do so.