Beware the 'experts' who insist they're never wrong

One measure of advancement in a society is the level of education. That's understandable. We should aim for everyone to have the level of education to which they aspire.

But there's a caveat - it needs to be put to good use.

Good use doesn't mean solely the advancement of oneself. It certainly doesn't mean using your knowledge to put others down. As the proportion of Australians with degrees increases, yes we have a "better educated" population - but it comes at a cost. If the majority of those with basic and higher degrees think they are now better people, we simply open a schism among ourselves.

How good a person you are has never depended upon your level of education. It depends on your values and the degree to which you uphold them.

A simple example makes the point. If you are highly qualified and complain when you're robbed, that's probably fair enough. But what if you overcharge or overservice your clients? Aren't you just robbing them in a subtle way?

Qualifications teach you about a certain area. Full stop. Having spent a while in government (last I heard I was the longest-serving female cabinet minister) I had the luxury of working with great people in my office and in the public service. One, who was chief of staff for the duration, had a PhD. Foreign aid was the field. He reminded me once that PhD holders know a lot about a very narrow area.

He was, and still is, a very smart guy - but his smarts don't come from his PhD. They come from being a thinker, observing both people and situations as they unfold, and learning from that experience.

The same should be said of a woman who started as an electorate officer doing primarily executive assistant work. No degree. Seventeen years later she left the job as a ministerial adviser. She had very similar smarts. The rules were to listen, think practically, understand others in the office or the community and get the job done. She did all of that. Two very valuable people with completely different educational backgrounds.

Does having qualifications entitle you to set yourself up as an expert commentator? Yes, in your area of expertise - provided you acknowledge that you may not have "the way, the truth and the light" exclusively. How many different doctors and epidemiologists did we see expressing different views about COVID restrictions? Plenty. We are lucky to live in a country where there can be such open debate. A downside, of course, is it leaves people wondering if the so-called experts really do "know" what is best. Hopefully we've learnt the lesson that there is often a range of options, rather than the one emphatically "best" way to do things.

Yet despite the obvious, we still have people with degrees who not only think they're better than others, they behave as though they are - and they are remarkably haughty about those who haven't had or chosen the tertiary education path. Hillary Clinton's comment about the "deplorables" wasn't aimed at people who fraternised with Jeffrey Epstein. The so-called progressive left has one glaringly hypocritical double standard: they are, rightly, opposed to all manner of discrimination - be it on the basis of gender, sexuality, disability, race or religion - however they reserve for themselves the right to discriminate, diss, put down and sneer at those who haven't had the educational opportunities they had. You couldn't have not heard it happen.

So we have a schism. The rise of the managerial class - the technocracy - is a real threat to our equilibrium. We have, on the one hand, those who not so much think they know better, but are sure of it. Some make their living pontificating. And on the other hand, we have those who are sick of being told what to do. Especially by people who often appear have not a clue about the real world.

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Common sense has always been a misnomer. We've developed a new type of serfdom where, for life, you'll be told what you can and can't do by those who have set themselves up as your betters.

Of course we need experts. The more the merrier. What they need to avoid like the plague is "expertise creep". It's like tax creep - it just keeps expanding. Hence the growing mistrust of those who are seen as self-appointed elites. If that distrust keeps growing, we are in for a rough time.

What would help is if everyone, whatever their level of education, just took a step back and asked why someone who disagrees with them holds that different view. Keeping an open mind is the mark of a sensible person. The person who rarely, if ever, exhibits doubt is undoubtedly a you-know-what-wit.

Doubt is a great thing. It's what drives us to make further inquires. Of course, like all things, it needs to be in the right proportion - a constant doubter of themselves never gets anything done, while a constant doubter of others is reviled as a pain-in-the-butt smarty pants .

But devoid of doubt, we turn our face away from all the new knowledge out there, waiting to be discovered. Devoid of doubt, we are destined to constantly sneer at others.

This modus operandi is for all of us, not just the politicians - but the prescription does apply especially to those in government. They've been elected to make the decisions and then to carry the can for them. It is not their own personal innate knowledge we're after. They are charged with getting the best knowledge and information together and then making a decision. They still have to explain their decisions and bring us with them.

In short, if you believe "all men are created equal", start behaving that way.