Am I a confident idiot ?

I would like to agree that I'm not a confident idiot, but by saying I'm not one….doesn't that mean I'm probably being one ?.  The article mentions that 'The American author and aphorist William Feather once wrote that being educated means “being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t.” As it turns out, this simple ideal is extremely hard to achieve' I'd like to believe that I know what I don’t know, for example….I don’t know anything about math, math and……..math but then again I can count to 100 and add numbers between 1-10….I mean that’s pretty impressive come on ! 

Sadly, if I were to analyse myself truthfully I most certainly am a confident idiot. In fact when I was younger, I had no problem acting like I knew everything when actually all I knew for certain was that you should never talk to strangers and not to eat food off the ground…well because that’s disgusting! Even currently I feel that I tend to overestimate my knowledge on topics that I have only touched on. But even though one is simply scraping the surface of those topics, don’t you still know something about them ? Or am I just being a confident idiot ? 

I think as human beings we stretch our knowledge because we hate the feeling of not knowing. We'd rather make something up and tell ourselves that we know everything than admit that we actually know nothing and that we are just a speck of dust in the universe. If you really think about it, if you were to disappear from the earth nothing would really change, I mean your family and friends would be affected but the world wouldn’t end just because you're gone and that fact scares people. It scares people to know just how unnoticed we actually are and somehow people just don’t want to accept that, we want the whole world to know who we are so we try to make ourselves stand out and be more superior by showing our intellect and knowledge. We are all trying to prove something…. the only problem is that everyone is ….so really  we are actually proving nothing. 

We as humans don’t like to feel insignificant and for that reason we try to show that we are important than others by saying we have all this knowledge that no one else has. All we want to do is stand out…even if that means claiming to know about the scientific concepts of 'plates of parallax, ultra-lipid, and cholarine.' so yes, I most certainly am a confident idiot and so are you.

I most closely identify with the sentiment "Ignorance is bliss". I was so happy about so many things until I learned about them. Here are some examples:

1: I thought that I was eating a healthy diet. I ate lots of fresh fruit and vegetables such as tomatoes and avocados. My idea that I was eating healthfully came to an abrupt halt when a I learned about the "Eat right for your blood type diet". My blood type is O positive. I am not supposed to be eating, among other foods, avocados and tomatoes. Knowledge shattered my feeling of bliss that I was eating a healthy diet.

2: Until I was about ten, I truly believed that Santa Claus and the Easter bunny were real. It was so great to think that they brought joy to children all over the world and that Santa was always only too glad to lend a listening ear to my Christmas wishes. It was only when late one Christmas Eve when I busted by parents putting gifts under the Christmas tree (they tried to say that they were helping Santa's Elves but I did not buy it) and when I found my mother's Easter Bunny footprint maker that I learned that Santa and the Easter Bunny did not exist. It was more fun and magical when I was ignorant of this.

3: Before I knew any better, I used to love jelly worms. I loved their texture and enjoyable it was to squish them between my teeth. But then I found out that they were made out of gelatin and, even worse, I found out what gelatin is made of. According to food expert website popsugar.com, gelatin is a tasteless and odourless substance that is made up by boiling the leftovers of meat processors: skin, cartilage and bones from animals. Yuk! Once I knew what jelly worms are made of, I could no longer eat them. I was much happier not knowing!