Dunning-Kruger Syndrome

[HanshiClayton]

Dunning-Kruger Syndrome is the formal label for a behavior we have all seen: Incompetent people have great faith in their own opinions.

Incompetent people overestimate their own knowledge and skill. Incompetent people fail to recognize competence in other people. Incompetent people fail to recognize their own inadequacy. They charge ahead with supreme confidence, and do damage everywhere they go. These are scientific facts, established by psychological studies of competence and incompetence.

Do you recognize this person? There's one in every seminar.

A long time ago I read a passage in Time Magazine that struck me as worth remembering: "A university education is a progression from cocksure ignorance to thoughtful uncertainty." I had more than my share of university education (10 years), and I think this is true. The more you study, the more you confront the fact that your comfortable prejudices were wrong. After a few hundred experiences of this type, you become cautious about displaying your ignorance.

Many karateka have not learned this lesson. They treat karate as if it were a fundamentalist religion. Their ignorance of historical karate is as solid as a stone. These people can be counted on to treat karate jutsu as a threat to their world order... and it is. Karate jutsu is rapidly destroying their comfortable island of ignorance. They can sense the waters rising. What they don't see yet, is that a whole new world opens up as a result.