The Tribune

Conceit: A high, often exaggerated opinion of one's own abilities, importance, or appearance (vanity, egotism, or arrogance).

THE rollercoaster rise and precipitous fall of Katie Zacharia as White House press secretary after five days is record-breaking. Her tenure was half that of Anthony Scaramucci, who served as communications director for approximately 10 days.

Zacharia’s hiring and firing highlight the vanity and conceit of ignorance on spectacular display worldwide. Despite her glaring inability for the job, she readily accepted the post. It blew up after a single train wreck briefing, leaving seasoned heads spinning.

Given the grand spectacle of ignorance in the US capital, Ms. Zacharia likely thought that the major qualifications for the job were to look a certain way, to be shamelessly obsequious, and to have a willingness to falsify and prevaricate.

The Hill reported Bill Clinton’s press secretary Joe Lockhart’s views on her appointment.

“Lockhart said when he got the job of press secretary, he took two months off to go to school, sit down with the national security team, budget team, and essentially get prepared.”

‘I wasn’t going to go out, the president wasn’t going to let me go out, the staff wasn’t — until I was absolutely ready, and that’s when I went out...’”

British novelist, satirist and critic, Samuel Butler (1612–1680) once wrote: “The truest characters of ignorance are vanity, and pride and arrogance.” Butler observed that ignorance is immodest, rarely quiet, and obnoxious.

The vanity of ignorance reveals a paradox: the tendency of those who know the least, to be the most self-assured and arrogant. Such individuals, who lack self-awareness or knowledge, exhibit loud certainty and inflated self-importance or pride.

To make themselves feel grander and superior, the boisterously ignorant typically ignore facts. They show a dismissive attitude toward others, pretending to know more than experts.

Vanity is about how we want others to perceive and to flatter us. For the ignorant, pride is more concerned with an overinflated opinion of worth and standing, despite limited abilities, minimal accomplishments, or scant intellectual capacity.

The conceit of the ignorant is so glaringly transparent as to be farcical. Some adopt affected manners and engage in playacting or big talk. Those with little accomplishments brag of their next big project, though previous ventures never materialized.

There are those who engage in outrageous, often pathological lies, about their success. The trappings of cars, houses, bling, money, and various material goods festoon and gild the ignorance.

Such vanity may have dire consequences, especially when world leaders make decisions which lead to the deaths and suffering of others, including economic problems and war.

Those with the conceit that they are well informed, but who know very little, typically showcase false confidence and a closed mind. They usually make disastrous and foolish choices.

The intellectual vacuity of the ignorant has a number of symptoms. There is the false and glowing pride for small or ridiculous ideas. They refuse to listen to others or learn new things. And they make colossal mistakes from which they rarely learn.

One of the close relatives of fake news is “fake knowing.” The latter cripples growth. The belligerently ignorant blame others for their mistakes or inability to succeed, believing that they are entitled, and that the world, or a country (or a family) has an obligation to help them succeed.

Why do those who know the least often speak the loudest? It’s a mask and a posture to distract from failure. Paradoxically, it has the opposite effect.

Think of those here at home in various fields who are large, ignorant, and sometimes in charge. Though they giddily enjoy titles, big positions, luxury cars, and may be called “honourable,” when the aforementioned disappear, their impersonation of success collapses.

Conceitedly posting images of oneself on various social media sites such as Instagram, while dressed up on foreign trips with self-reverential gobbledygook and cliches, does not impress. Instead, it tends to highlight one’s deficits, ignorance, and mistakes.

Years ago, a philosophy teacher warned of the “vomiting of the internal,” the endless capacity of those in the modern age to spew bull crap—a euphemism– amplified by various media such as television.

Now in the social media age, the vomiting has become a torrent. The most ignorant and ill-informed spin falsehoods and conspiracies, while boosting their glossy manufactured profiles with conceited photos, quotes, and self-advertisement.

This is sometimes the case with a good number of those in the Bahamas political class, enthralled by the temporary trappings and spoils of office.

The Dunning–Kruger effect, named for social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, is “a hypothetical cognitive bias.” People with low ability suffer from an “internal illusion [overestimating] their own ability. …

“The miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from people’s inability to recognize their lack of ability.

“People with high ability at a task underestimate their own ability. The miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others being more capable.”

Butler, like others, have observed over the centuries that wisdom, insight, and the capacity for growth begins with humility and a deep recognitions of one’s limits.

The Socratic realization of how much one does not know remains illusive for those who do not appreciate the vastness of the unknown, as well as the empty caverns of their own ignorance.

Fearful of being caught out, the ignorant endlessly engage in delusions of grandeur, pretentiousness, bragging, boisterousness, and defensiveness, to hide insecurities and jealousies. The irony is that others easily see through the conceit, egotism, and masking behavior. If they humbled themselves and asked for guidance, others might gladly help.

Alas, it is quite often the more informed who are open to advice and to discovering how much they have still to learn.

A world-famous chef, who created a cooking empire and won numerous awards, remarked on why he constantly travelled, read, and took on apprentices. “There is so much I don’t know,” he replied.

Among his greatest teachers, he shared, were the street vendors and local chefs he discovered in developing countries who had the gift of improvising with food and techniques in limited circumstances.

His other great teachers? Younger chefs, willing to experiment, mentored by a master chef.

There is a blessed ignorance: the humility to keep growing and the vulnerability to ask for help. Then there is the unintelligent and thick-headed ignorance: the type that balks at correction and the exposure of one’s limits, all the while masquerading as being on top of the world.