The cult of haughtiness

Haughtiness: the appearance or quality of being arrogantly superior and disdainful.

It’s the penultimate day of 2019 and I’ve been thinking about the social tension that arises around expertise.

We live in a world of short sharp communications where no one actually knows you. It’s easier to fake knowledge and superiority on a topic than ever. This is the cult of online haughtiness that haunts us right now.

It’s socially awkward to say I don’t know. Our egos are more exposed than ever and with role models that rhyme with the word “frump” set the tone that winging it is social currency as long we are charismatic and entertaining.

It used to be easier to become an authentic expert. With “slow” information flow like books or newspapers we would have the time to map out a topic, go line by line, diligently understanding and build up our knowledge before we tell others that we are an expert.

Today we signal our expertise first and when we are caught deny any absence of knowledge even though inside we feel bare and exposed. If we don’t know we look it up after the fact.

Going into a new decade, it’s more important than ever to slow down, have greater integrity with our understanding of reality and how we present ourselves, and truly take the time to celebrate diligent knowledge acquisition and communication of expertise.

Reversing this culture of haughtiness will have many positive consequences for the problems we can solve and our impact on them in a new decade.

Wishing you a happy new year.