Harness the Power of Your Ignorance

How Socratic Ignorance can change your life.

Google is slowly causing the extinction of a powerful phrase — “I don’t know.” No matter your question, Google is sure to have an answer, which adds even more shame to our ignorance. Our lack of knowledge is easily attributed to lack of intelligence.

It is due to this fear of accepting ignorance that we rather spit out baseless opinions, or we let ourselves get “educated” by 30-second clips on complex topics, parroting baseless ideas on subjects we barely understand. But anything is better than saying, “I don’t know.”

The Greek philosopher Socrates would say we’re insane.

Socrates believed that our power to seek truth lies in the awareness of our ignorance. He was convinced that the only knowledge available to us is knowing that we know nothing.

“I only know one thing — that I know nothing.” — Socrates

The dangers of not recognizing ignorance

There are several dangers in being unable to recognize our own ignorance. For one, we limit ourselves to our current knowledge, and thus, we limit our growth. You can’t teach anything to someone who knows everything.

Socrates knew that clearing your mind of false ideas, even if it leaves you in a state of self-confessed ignorance, is a necessary step to learning anything.

Secondly, our failure to recognize or to investigate our lack of knowledge could send us on a wild-goose chase. You may end up pursuing goals without a clear reason why, wasting your precious time on Earth on meaningless tasks.

Meno asked Socrates how to be successful or virtuous. As was Socrates’ custom, he determined that before answering that question they must first establish the definition of success and virtue.

In many ways, we are all standing before Socrates, asking him what it takes to be successful. We all want success, but few would know how to define it.

Society has shown us what success should look like, and it’s always a rather limited perspective, which invariably includes piles of money.

Because success can mean many things to different people, we must apply the Socratic Wisdom to our definition. Have we truly defined what success means to us, or are we standing on the definition of others?

“Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much money as possible, and similarly with reputation and honor, and give no attention or thought to truth and understanding the perfection of your soul?” — Socrates

There was nothing more important to Socrates than putting conventional wisdom to the test. If we are to live by these rules imposed on us, we might as well make sure they’re true.

But in order to achieve such a grand goal, we must be ready to concede that we don’t know anything.

“He among you is the wisest who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is really worth nothing at all.” — Plato

So go ahead. Confess your ignorance with no shame. Bask in the glory of knowing that our self-confessed ignorance may make us wiser than we ever thought possible.