A little bit of "knowledge" goes a long way

I have been thinking about how people take a very small amount of knowledge about a topic and then magnify it until so that they somehow become “expert” in the topic.

I’ve spoken with a friend of mine about this at length over the past two years I think. We’ve laughed about people who read the Yahoo headlines and then spout off like they’ve spent years studying about, say, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico (that’s one of the Yahoo headlines right now).

About two weeks ago This American Life discussed this topic. I thought it was hilarious because it was so true. Then on Sunday our new summer school session started. My new students and their parents came to the class to meet me and my new program assistant. One of the parents started talking to me about ancient Greece.

“You’re doing Greece, of course.”

No, actually we’re not. I am doing Rome instead. I’ve substituted Egypt in for Greece this year.

“Well, I suppose you will be doing Akhenaten.”

I might do Akhenaten. It depends on whether or not I get pressed for time.

“Ah well, he’s Middle Kingdom. You probably do the Old Kingdom.”

Actually he’s New Kingdom.

“The end of the New Kingdom?”

No, the beginning of the New Kingdom. He’s from the 18th Dynasty.

“Well, I would have thought that you’d want to do him. He was monotheistic after all.”

This is the point when I knew that this woman was taking her small blob of knowledge and using it to paint a vast canvas of crap. I could have taken several different paths at this point:

1) Told her that as an Africanist, I actually know Egypt pretty well and that I have a good idea of what to include and what not to include.

2) Tell her that monotheism isn’t the end result of history, so thinking that it was some kind of novel development was erroneous.

3) Explain that Afro-Asiatic culture was traditionally monotheistic, and that polytheism developed over time as the Egyptian state coalesced and absorbed smaller states.

4) Explain that Akhenaten’s “monotheism” was really a political ploy, not really a religious revolution.

Instead, I did none of the above. I bit my tongue, smiled, and said “Thank you for coming.”