From time to time we all must deal with those difficult people, the ones who believe absolutely in something that is clearly nonsense. They just know they are right, and are hellbent on ensuring that everyone else knows it.
I have learnt to feel sorry for them, although it did take the best part of 45 years to reach that point, from one of anger all those years ago, evolving into contempt, then progressively dismissing them as nutjobs, then ignoring them.
Occasionally I still fail, as in the case with Liberal MP Craig Kelly, whose ignorance combines with insistence that black is actually white, makes my blood boil.
However, these days, I recognise that their certainty of an outcome blinds them to the facts that might lead to a different conclusion, they become so wedded to their own narrative that any contrary suggestion is dismissed as irrelevant or insignificant.
When you believe you know everything about a topic, how can you learn?
You simply stop listening. We believe we have all the relevant ‘facts’, our analysis of those ‘facts’ delivers a conclusion that becomes, in our own mind, self-evident and absolute.
However, when you are a rabbit that believes there are no foxes around, you are destined to be fox shit.
Failure to recognise the holes in our own thinking makes us blind to an alternative.
The alternative of course, is that occasionally, just occasionally, the apparent nutjob has a point, but it is so far out of the current accepted narrative that he/she is dismissed and in times gone past, punished for those views.
Such a person was Ignaz Semmelweis. He was a Hungarian doctor working in the Vienna General hospital in the mid 1800’s. Semmelweis proved the massive incidence of infection in the obstetrics ward was caused by the practises of doctors. Despite having masses of confirming data, and publishing several papers and a book, he was rejected by the medical community, so aggressively, he ended having a nervous breakdown and being committed by his colleagues to an asylum for the insane.
In this case however, I do not think Craig Kelly is any sort of Ignaz Semmelweis, just a nutjob who needs to be put somewhere quiet and ignored.
You wrote about me.
It seems to me I’m the Semmelweis of defence.
Since you claim 40 years of management experience, including the mystical practice of ‘strategy’ I’d be happy for you to listen even f you don’t know anything about defence or Defence, and tell me if I’m a nut job.
I’ll even give you all the information about defence/Defence to enable this, though there aren’t really any secret files needed to prove I’m right.
Strategy is not ‘Mystical/ but the application of common sense and some data. The combination is why so many stuff it up, or ignore it.
Being ‘the Semmelweis’ would not be good for your health and sanity, I have found dealing with idiots who think they have all the answers too frustrating to contemplate. Guess that is why i work for myself, and am not wealthy!