Lets say that you have spent the last four years of your life in the workplace or in a college or university settings. In that environment you have accrued and learned a certain level of information and accumulated a certain amount of experiences about a particular subject (relevant to everyday life or not). You take that information, some of it affects your daily decisions and some of it does not, and apply it to your life.
You have a certain level of knowledge about something.
Now say you and talking about a subject that you have a great deal of knowledge about with someone who doesn’t know near as much. How does this work? How do you get them to the point where you are?
My experience tells me one thing. Its not in showing them how much you know.
I remember a religion class I took in college on Buddhism. There was a concept we discussed called the curse of knowledge. I’m not sure if that is where the concept originated or not but there is some truth to it. Its simply a concept that explores the fact that once you have a certain level of knowledge you can’t imagine what it would be like not to have that knowledge anymore. So in trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t have that knowledge there is often a huge disconnect. The most common example of this is an experiment where a person is asked to “tap” a song for another person. The tapper predicted the listener would guess the song right 50% of the time while they actually only got it right 2.5% of the time. The tapper has an additional element of knowledge that is, knowing what the song is. Chip and Dan Heath in their book Made to Stick describe it this way,
“The problem is that tappers have been given knowledge (the song title) that makes it impossible for them to imagine what it’s like to lack that knowledge. When they’re tapping, they can’t imagine what it’s like for the listeners to hear isolated taps rather than a song. This is the Curse of Knowledge. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listeners’ state of mind.”
This brings up the question, well then how do we communicate anything? Again, I know that it is not in showing then how much you know. If anything that fronts an attitude of arrogance.
I am not saying this is the way to do it, but might I suggest a relational approach to communication. Instead of showing people how much we know maybe we bring them along a similar process that we went through to get where we are. One of my new friends in Washington DC always encourages people to be tour guides rather than travel agents. A tour guide goes with you everywhere, taking you to and talking you through each place, experiencing it with you. A travel agent sits in comfort and ease dictating what you should see and experience while never having done it themselves. They will show you their knowledge but may not help you to get where they are.
We cannot assume that people are in the same place that we are in any arena of life. We must get to know people first and learn to communicate relationally.
Let me know what you think!
Your points are great. You can only relate to someone from where you are and if the other person does not relate where they are, no matter how much you try to communicate, true communication does not happen. Relational communication is just that…it needs to be relational…both parties sharing where they are. What happens when they do not both share is a complete lack of communication and understanding. Assumptions are made about where a person is…either it is assumed they are in a completely different place (when they may be closer to where you are then you think) or they are in the same place (when they are not at all).
Communication is challenging…good thoughts about it and the curse of knowledge. It’s often difficult to share where you are and how to get there without using your knowledge as arrogance. Tour guide/travel agent metaphor was a great illustration of the thought!
I think you’ve got a point with that one – relational communication is so crucial – its the trust factor.
Assuming the title, I was expecting something quite different. Oddly enough, I have my own theology specifically on the curse of knowledge.
The curse is this: the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. Interesting. Don’t you think it’s true. I don’t know how much I don’t know about a subject until I start studying it. The more I know about it, the more I realize I have more to learn. To me, this is God saying knowledge is insufficient.