Encountering your ignorance.

 I rarely watch television. Looking back, it has never really been my thing and leaving home to go to university just cemented that distance between myself and the medium. Every now and then though I find something to watch that really piques my interest, holds my attention and I become entirely consumed by it. I have had this experience with two such shows this year thus far and that is a miracle in these shores. As it stands, I am consumed by Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” over a decade since the first season came out.

Another one of my philosophies is about music but I suppose all art and it is that I do not have to listen to and enjoy things immediately when they come out. In fact, it is not uncommon for me to add an album from an artist I love to my library and have days, weeks and months pass before I press play. I believe that music/art finds me when I am ready to meet it and I have always been this way. This means that sometimes people will be discussing music we have in common that they have distinct memories of and thoughts about and I will happily have none. Some time in the future that music/art and I may have an encounter, and I will either toss it to the side or begin to have my own distinct memories with it.

One of the ways I find capitalism to be cruel is the creation of urgency around everything. Job seekers and even experienced staff are bombarded with advice about working environments needing them to be fast thinkers and getting to solutions as quickly as possible. While that is sometimes required for work, it absolutely should not be a standard requirement for making or actioning the decisions we make about your lives and those of others. It seems to me that we have become terrified of encountering our ignorance, even about ourselves.

We are perpetually at speed and finding ourselves in exactly the same circumstances repeatedly because of it. We need to let things sit in our minds, keep company, bicker with our egos, be in conflict with our ideals and ultimately find harmony with our full selves. The gurufication (this word may be an original invention) of everything is also not aiding our cause. There is a three-step method to everything being peddled as invaluable knowledge and feeding what now seems to me like a bottomless need for enlightenment. The knowledge production and decision-making processes of our own lives and those of others ought to be exceedingly more intricate than what we offer capitalism. That is how we preserve our humanity.

Back to “Parts Unknown” and why it is that I love it so much. I think Anthony Bourdain is excellent at encountering his ignorance. Firstly, this quality is quite the achievement because he is after all both white and American (I will not be elaborating further). But mostly because it is so incredibly pleasant to watch. A human being encountering others with entirely different backgrounds, dispositions, sense of humour, turmoil, beliefs and of course cuisine yet maintaining what seems like a genuine and consistent interest in all of them. Asking more questions than he gives answers or offers solutions. Keeping an open mind, showing no judgement, making no conclusions but always interested.

I think being able to encounter your ignorance is a superpower and a gateway to empathy. We need to be comfortable with not knowing, being unsure and rest the ego when it insists that we know better than we do. Moving through the world as if all our ideas and ways of being are superior is a fundamental flaw and creates distance where there should be none. Or at least makes it larger than it should be. It also makes us make decisions in haste giving little room to the imagination and trapping us in cycles we do not understand. Bourdain’s reception of people and the fullness of their humanity is something to admire. I cannot imagine a world where we treat ourselves and others that way and it remain as easy as it seems to be to harm one another and self-destruct as we do now.

We should probably reserve the overt performance of intellect for our jobs where it may have benefits. When handling ourselves and one another, we should treat the discomfort of not knowing that forms at the pit of our stomache as a opportunity to learn and not a clarion call to impart, convert or reduce.