A maxim I often quoted as I taught was that “It’s not what you know that causes you grief, but what you don’t know.” In other words, just because you don’t like mathematics is not a good excuse to choose not to learn it. There is wisdom in knowing how little we know. In admitting ignorance we make a small step to wisdom.
The book that is currently languising on my bedstand is Hayek’s “The Constitution of Liberty.” The discussion of ignorance in the first section has a whiff of wisdom to it. What we know is a small subset of what can be known, and much of our knowns are wrong anyway. Hayek suggests that within civilization, we have access to the knowledge of our ancestors. Cultures and civilization didn’t arise out of whole cloth, invented and immutable. Civilization includes many “how it’s done” concepts that have become available to us because an individual’s knowledge serves to assist those who are in contact with him, and improve their efficiency at tasks. This is not conscious, explicit knowledge only, but all sorts of rules for interactions. For instance, walking on the sidewalk, when you meet someone coming in the other direction in my part of the world we both veer right. As we’re southern, we also smile and speak. Much useless discussion of the weather happens thus.
Our knowledge of what makes the civilization work is limited, but our capacity to be effective in achieving our goals within our civilization grows as the complexity of the civilization grows.
One of the functions of civilization is the transmission and communication of knowledge. Knowledge is transmitted through for example the writing of a cookbook, and communicated amongst our peers in the many discussions of how best to season your crawfish, or where the freshest seafood is to be found. Paraphasing Hayek, what is essential to the process is that each individual be able to act on his particular knowledge in his particular situation, and that he be able to use his individual skills and opportunities within the limits known to him and for his own individual purpose.
Thus the case for maximizing freedom of an individual, is that with each finding his own way, in his individual ignorance, he’s able to borrow from those about him who are more efficient. So our ignorance though monumental, is decreased by interacting with people capable of achieving whatever it is that we want to achieve. Without freedom, the incremental improvements that are possible in spite of our ignorance would not happen.
And freedom, that magic which allows an individual to seek for his own ends, also allows civilization to be very dynamic, and able to change as situations change.
Freedom, the opportunity to be blazingly wrong, but “do it my way,” is not just a high sounding goal of a libertarian, it’s the grease that has aided us in the US of A to create an economy vibrant and dynamic in the extreme. Are we pissing it away in mountains of rules, legislation and regulation? How many pages was that Obama Care bill? And the continuing resolution to keep the government going… the one that is the object of current brinksmanship?
So, a random Louisiana shot. Madisonville
