"An Expert is someone who delivers three correct guesses consecutively"
Dr Laurence J Peter
You know it never fails to unimpress me how much unsolicited advice there is available to the average person every day of the week.
It also never fails to impress me how deeply unqualified those dispensing the advice often are.
But
being unqualified (sometimes to the point of being offensively so) does
not deter those motivated to inaugurate a 'special teaching moment'…
which of course only they can dispense.
This is not limited to well meaning friends and aunties serving wisdom with a cup of tea... everyone seems to be at it! From young people giving advice on the ageing process, to men giving advice on childbirth, to celibates giving
advice on marriage... our society is riddled with those who have not a
clue about what they are talking about advising those who could quite
happily live without the tutorial!
It's
just irresistible, I suspect, that when presented with a juicy and
quite often controversial subject to not sound flummoxed . This is The Age of Google after all. We are all finger tip experts on any given subject.
And
once we hit our trusty search engines, who do find substantiating our
newly acquired knowledge? Celebrities. I kid you not. Google anything
and you will find a celebrity
bleating their heart out about it and inviting you to take a walk in
their shoes so that you can almost have first hand knowledge of any
degree of human suffering. Because if you didn't know it.... no one
feels pain like a celebrity.
You don't believe me?
Okay lets try with just a few things that may be on my mind at the moment.
Google... you magic 8 ball of the 21st century.... I need to understand what to do about:
Q: How do I get my son settled into uni life/ living away from home for the first time?
A: Cherie Blair tells us how. She bought her son a 1/2 million pound flat when he went to Bristol Uni to "protect him during that rough settling in period of the 1st term". Apparently a student pad that costs more than the average family home is not mollycoddling.
Gosh...
I was thinking a 6 pack of 1664 and a top up on his pay as you go
phone... but thank you Cherie, I see the error of my ways!
Q: How to I do my bit for the environment and stay stylish at the same time?
A: Trudie Styler knows all about this. In fact she has
no worries about being the founder of the Rainforest foundation and
private jetting her hairdresser from New York to Washington for a party.
Apparently carbon footprints do not apply to private aviation.
Ah... I was thinking putting designer house number stickers on my wheely bins... but I hear you Trudes... I have to think bigger.
Q: How to I drop the 11lbs wine fat I've put on following a bereavement?
A: Gwyneth Paltrow knows all about gaining poundage after losing a beloved family member and offers inspirational guidance for a simple way to shed them. All she had to do was just set her mind to lose them... so she did, and she's never gained them back.
WOW thank Gwynnie very motivational as I am sure a personal trainer coaching you along through every pushup and crunch and a nutritionist buying your groceries, planning your diet, fixing your meals and watching every calorie you put into your body has nothing to do with it at all. I'll just set my mind to it.
You
see... it's clear... none of those three have a damn clue! They are
just NOT qualified to dispense advice. At least NOT to such as we.
Even huge multinational companies are at it! Believe it or not at a leading broadcasting company, a Negroid female subject to a lengthy tutorial on how not to be a racist to her own race! This was dispensed by a collection of Caucasian females - who on the advice of an couple of Asian males felt best qualified to give pointers regarding the experience of being a member of the said females race.I believe the female in receipt of said tutorial no longer is employed by that broadcaster. Quite
remarkable when one considers that the broadcaster in question has no
problem paying for a football pundits valued contribution to sport...
when said pundit once referred to Marcel Desailly
as "a fucking lazy thick nigger". But then I suppose as a Caucasian
said pundit could not possibly be found guilty of causing racial offence
when one examines the values in question.
But out here in the sane world one must ask....What the hell
is it with people who have not one clue about what they are talking
about giving advice to those who really should be teaching them!
In recent times I have been subject to advice on housing, employment and bereavement - gleefully
dispensed by those who have never had an issue with any of the above.
It has been the most humorous of all the things that have happened in
the past 6 months - lengthy tutorials in how to survive crisis's that have thus left their own personal lives unblemished.
I
have no idea why it is we as a society now feel that to demonstrate
that we care about something we have to be an expert on it (even when
quite clearly we know sweet f a about the given subject ). We really do
not have to do this.
There is an old fashioned way of showing you care about something. It was called LISTENING.
In
the old days... that's what people did to comfort someone who had a
crisis on... they listened to them. They let them raise their concerns
and then they'd simply say they'd be there for them to see them through
the crisis. And then... they were.
And you know what's hilarious....
By doing so they actually really and truly.... became EXPERTS.
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