Maybe we should all strive to be a bit more ignorant

We often handicap ourselves by using our “expertise” as a prison to confine our ambition, rather than a well from which we can nurture it.

As strange as it might sound, ignorance is likely just as important to progress as ambition, curiosity or intelligence.

It might seem like a strange thing to say — especially in today’s “information age” when accumulating knowledge has never been easier. As the marketing executive Rory Sutherland has often pointed out, after all, our current era is absurdly more obsessed with accumulating data than we once were:

During the second world war, experts needed to decide whom to train as RAF fighter pilots. Today this would mean a battery of complex tests. Back then they used two simple questions: 1) Have you ever owned a motorcycle? 2) Do you own one now? The ideal recruits were those who answered 1) Yes and 2) No. They wanted people who had been brave enough to ride a motorbike but were sane enough to abandon the habit.

Indeed, our obsession with accumulating data and information has become so profound, “ignorance” has come to be viewed with a distinct sense of disdain and indignation.

To be ignorant, after all, implies that one is unlearned, clueless or uninformed — meandering through life without knowledge, context or perspective to enlighten our understanding of the world. (No wonder we so often use it as a pejorative when mocking the clearly clueless ruminations of our political “others.”)

But what if ignorance isn’t as disgraceful as we often believe it to be? What if it is often ignorance that propels us toward progress or hurls us toward new opportunities?

One of the greatest Hollywood directors of the 20th century, for example, credited much of his innovative style to just such a trait:

When asked where he got his confidence while making Citizen Kane, Orson Welles gave credit to a trait many of us would actively avoid admitting:  

Ignorance … sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it. It’s only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful.

Welles’ point, like much of his artistic work, is profound. Welles wasn’t exactly an “expert” in moviemaking when he directed his groundbreaking masterpiece at a mere 25 years old — and yet, he created one of the most innovative and enduring films to ever come out of Hollywood…