Given that the whole ethos of my blog here is that there is a lot we do not know and we should all be much more ready to accept that and be much more willing to say “I don’t know” you might well be surprised that this post is – in some ways – railing against folks who “don’t know”.
It isn’t a surprise to me that there is what might be called a “dark side” to ignorance. In these posts I have tried to concentrate on “learning new things” or “filling gaps in our knowledge”. The dark side is epitomised by those who – when challenged about something say “I don’t know anything about that” (you won’t need to think too much to identify the main culprits here).
If something is happening and getting wide coverage on news media – and especially when it is impacting your responsibilities directly – then using “I didn’t know about that” raises serious questions. If you really don’t know then are you simply not paying attention; or are those responsible for keeping you informed failing in their duties; or are they deliberately withholding important knowledge from you? Whichever it is – it is not a good look.
The alternative, of course, is that you do know, but you are avoiding taking responsibility for not acting on the knowledge in a timely manner. I’m not absolutely sure which of these scenarios is the most worrying – but none of them are comforting! All of them also touch on the “Does the truth matter” debate as well. It is, of course, easier to say “I didn’t about that – it is the first I have heard of it” than be asked to answer uncomfortable questions about the matter in question.
Assuming for the purpose of argument that the “hiding the truth” option is the prevalent one you are immediately plunged into the difficulty of maintaining a network of lies to back it up – and have your previous words contradicted the idea that you “didn’t know”. Everyone knows that it is hard to avoid a lie being called out. Especially on this sort of thing there isn’t the intricacies of a conspiracy theory to back up alternative beliefs. Those who accept conspiracy theories (on the whole) are quite firm in their grasp of that alternative reality – that is why it is impossible to argue against them.
However, that is – at least – a defensible point of view. As far as they are concerned it is “the truth”.
The “I didn’t know about that” statement is – in contrast – rarely going to be “the whole truth” as at some level those who are stating that are simply being dishonest.
Of course, the mere fact that they are denying knowledge of something heightens the belief that the “something” is not a good thing. If it was it would be easy to say “I hadn’t heard about that but isn’t that a great thing”. There are, though, many reasons why you might want to keep some things secret and not all of those reasons are bad ones. So feigning ignorance is, on occasion, a very necessary course of action. Saying “I can’t tell you” is perhaps in itself saying too much about the subject – complete ignorance is a much safer way to go about it.
It is clear though that most of those answering “I don’t know” in hearings or on TV or whatever are not doing so because there is a national security interest to be protected or because there is some other stuff that should not be disclosed. They are using the phrase to divert attention from wrong, possibly illegal or immoral, things that they are being questioned about.