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There is a large 20/20 conference to be held in Australia shortly. It is meant to gather together 1000 Australian citizens to discuss the country and its future.The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, did not want the conference to be dominated by lobbyists from Big Business and neither did he want the conference to be overrun with so-called ‘experts’ drawn from the ranks of academe and trendy think-tanks. No, he wanted a range of regular citizens as is encapsulated in the concept of a democracy. And he ensured that that would occur by making everyone pay for their own air travel and accommodation (which wouldn’t have worried those from Corporations but would immediately preclude academics who are used to getting freebies).
There is of course a notion, one probably spawned and promoted by academics, that experts should be left to solve all society’s problems. Yes, according to them, Dr Dis or Dr Dat have all the answers and that’s the end of the matter. The corollary of this is the belief that citizens who don’t have bunches of qualifications aren’t capable of thinking, aren’t capable of having original ideas, aren’t capable of achieving anything much. Yet nothing is further from the truth.
Of course, in theory, experts should have all the answers. If you have a dicky heart, you immediately look for a surgeon who has lots of qualifications, both graduate and postgraduate, AND lots of experience. After all, you wouldn’t trust the local G.P. or a Vet to take hammer and saw to your chest, would you? Similarly, consider a nuclear scientist. You wouldn’t want the local Science teacher from the High School to be carrying out experiments with uranium in the school lab, would you? You’d want a Professor of Nuclear Physics involved. But this kind of expertise is ‘technical’ and sometimes requires physical coordination and dexterity.
However, in other areas of expertise the situation is not so clear cut! Consider fields like sociology, political science, history, psychology, education, economics, etc. These subjects are stuffed to the gills with theories and learned people argue interminably about this idea and that, this school of thought and that. Anyone who has a degree or who has done postgraduate work in these areas (as I have) will know exactly what I’m talking about. Perhaps this explains why experts in these fields are not really such experts at all. They may well be eminently knowledgeable about theories only.
To make things even worse, as anyone who has been on the academic production line with its rigid, prescriptive format will attest, being an academic does require a fair degree of conformity, of rote learning, of adopting a formalized approach to problem-solving which does, by its nature, tend to stifle both originality and charisma. This might explain why ‘experts’ are not at the forefront of societal change, are not leading or directing our society, and why most of them are not dynamic.
Looking at the state of our world: the continuing wars, global warming, massive economic inequality, behavioural problems like rape and murder and drug use, imperialism, air, soil and water degradation, etc., which are occurring despite the ever increasing numbers of ‘experts’ being churned out by universities and colleges, the question could well be asked: how useful are ‘experts’ and does society place too much reliance upon them?
Rather than drowning in experts, it might be better to look elsewhere for solutions to the world’s ills!
