Ignorantly Smart

Sometimes we are the joke, even when we can’t see it, and especially when we’re ignorantly smart. What does that mean? Keep reading . . .

In a conversation with an acquaintance, he spoke of his father’s recent death and how he and his brother had inherited his father’s land along with cattle and horses. I love it when black folks inherit something other than burial debt from a relative’s passing. But—and there’s always a but—my joy at the knowledge that he’d basically been handed a thriving livelihood quickly evaporated when he pointed out how he and his brother were “double-handedly” destroying that livelihood (two singles make a double, so there!).

You see his father had always raised his animals naturally—no hormones, no preservatives, no steroids or antibiotics. This son, however, and his brother, who had discovered the Internet, yet not quite learned how to discriminatorily digest the information found within its thick cobwebs, had stumbled on the concept of vaccinating animals and shooting them up with penicillin despite them being healthy and displaying no symptoms of illness. So, now, the very animals that had always lived healthy lives on their father’s farm were being given chemicals that would not only shorten their lifespans and taint their meat and milk, but do the same to those humans who ingested it on a regular basis.

Sad to say, he was ecstatic about this newfound knowledge and exclaimed, “Sometimes the old mind has to go away with the old to welcome in the new minds. We’re doing things differently than my daddy did, smarter. My brother found all kinds of information on the Internet, and he’s been sharing it with me. Every time I turn around, he comes up on something new. We learned that we need to be preventive with the animals, so we vaccinate them and give them penicillin shots so they won’t contract diseases. See? My daddy didn’t know that, because he was stuck in the old way of doing things.”

In other words, we’re smarter than my daddy was. Not just smarter than him, but smarter than millions of farmers who preceded him and who also did not use “smart” chemicals as a “preventive” method for diseases that might happen, but as a daily occurrence did not, since the animals ate their proper diet. Of course, his flawed, unresearched thinking never allowed him to get past the “but” in that statement.

I didn’t know whether to laugh at the hilarity of his ignorance or cry because of the danger it represented.

I wanted to ask him how sick the animals had been prior to them being “proactive,” but I knew he’d never be able to understand where I was coming from. He’d see it as an offense to his intelligence instead of a question that begged an answer for the health and safety of the animal and those who ingested the flesh and other byproducts of these animals.

I’ve gotten to the point, where I try not to impose my knowledge, no matter how well founded, upon the ignorantly smart. *meandering sentence alert* You might label me arrogant, but it’s not with the thought that I’m more intelligent that I’m cautious about sharing too much—it’s because experience has taught me that the more you try to convince someone of something the less convinced they’ll be and their degree of ignorance is usually a strong indicator of how much you should try, if at all. *end meandering sentence alert*

So, yeah, it’s not about me being arrogant or placing myself on this higher plateau. I am, however, highly capable when it comes to my ability to decipher bullshit from dog shit—although I abhor the smell of both. The one thing I’ve learned with the ignorantly smart is that they do not want your advice, because—guess what?—the advice they’ve decided to take is one that sounds more credible than the one you’re spewing because it can be found in abundance on the Internet, news shows, morning talk shows, and billboards; in magazines, newspapers, TV shows and commercials; and the FDA’s, CDC’s, NIH’s, NCI’s, USDA’s sites, etc. Tada!!!

In true Nandi fashion though, I had to at least warn him against the dangers of vaccines in animals—four-legged and two. While he seemed to understand that it wasn’t advisable for humans to take vaccines, I don’t think he was yet ready to concede on animals, because after all, he and his brother were now conducting brilliant research over the Internet that said their father didn’t know everything after all and new-day thinking represents a step toward evolution. Mmm . . .

He, like so many, has no idea the conflicts of interest that abound when it comes to information that is shared with the public, whether through news and media outlets, scientific journals or the Internet—which can be a valuable university of sorts for discriminating minds, while at the same time, a veritable and dangerous cesspool for those who are ignorantly smart.

After speaking with him, I’m now in need of another good story. One that doesn’t end with the children left behind undoing the good that had been done by the forefathers and mothers.

My advice: keep your pool of ignorantly smart associates small. And that’s not being arrogant. That is, however, being able to decipher the bullshit from the dog shit—while abhoring them both.