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I got caught in the ugly dance of the circle of ignorance

Francisco Miraval      

Suddenly, the phone at my office stopped working. I checked the connections and the device, and I found everything was in order. However, the line was dead and I was unable to place or receive calls.

I checked everything one more time and then, using my cell phone, I called the phone company. I selected “9” to speak with a representative in Spanish (usually, the wait is shorter) and almost immediately I got a recording in English asking me for the phone number and a description of the problem.

I was finally able to speak with somebody (in English) and I explained the problem to him. He listened to me, asked me to repeat everything I just said one more time, and then he said he had no idea what was going. His only suggestion was to send a technician, charging only $99 an hour, to solve the problem.

It didn’t matter what I asked or what I answered. The only answered I got was “We can send you a technician”. The “conversation” was so disgusting that I felt trapped in the ugly dance of the circle of perpetual ignorance. And that was not the only time last week. Let me explain.

I have been working as a consultant for a certain company for two decades and that company decided to use new technology to send its payments. To activate the new payment method, I went to the bank where I have my account.

The cashier told me she never heard of the new technology and she asked me to talk with a customer service representative who told me he knew nothing about it and asked me to talk with the branch manager who said he never heard of the new method of payment. In fact, he was share it was just a scam and that I was there either as a victim of fraud or about to commit fraud.

I tried to explain I was there neither to confirm the validity of the new technology nor to commit fraud. I just wanted to activate the new payment system. It was to no avail. The frustrating dance of ignorance was again circling around me.

I can provide, of course, numerous other examples. Sometimes you ask one thing and they answer with something totally unrelated. Or they assume you are the ignorant and they explain to you the basics of something you already know very well. Or they call themselves “experts”, but the only thing they know is how to pretend to be experts.

In the meantime, the frenzy of the ignorance dance increase, transforming from vultures flying in circle to piranhas attacking. It is difficult, even impossible to escape, because he/she who affirms to know doesn’t and everybody affirms to know.

Socrates said, “All I know is that I know nothing.” And Paul of Tarsus talked about the end of the “times of ignorance”. Regrettably, our ignorance, far from being learned (as Nicholas of Cusa suggested) is just plain ignorance.

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