Suddenly, Everybody’s an Expert. 👈🏼That article in the New York Times was written in 2000. Can you imagine if that statement was appropriate then, how much more appropriate can it be now? Now in the age of TikTok and YouTube and the plethora of how to shorts and videos. Now in the in age of influencers masquerading as experts.

I’m reminded of a famous quote:

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few

Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

That quote and the sentiment behind it from the author of the book which is rather famous if you know anything about Buddhism, seems to have escaped the author of this article in his sweeping generalisation: The cult of expertise comes for Buddhism | Salon.com

Shunryu Suzuki is one of my favourite Buddhist authors and that book one of my favourite. With this kind of sentiment, he takes the complex and makes it simple, when it comes to his subject matter.

Shunryu Suzuki is a pre-eminent Sōtō Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States, and is renowned for founding the first Zen Buddhist monastery outside Asia.

If anything, he is arguing against any form of expertise.

I get that the author of the article on Salon is saying that pre-eminent Western thinkers, doctors, psychologists and neuroscientists and especially the tech industry in America, have co-opted Buddhism into a science of the mind. I agree with him to to a large extent.

The point Shunryu Suzuki was making with his beginners mind is to see everything with a fresh perspective, even things you have been doing many times, as if it were the first time. Experiment and discover for yourself what new knowledge and insights you might pick up, because the world is filled with infinite possibilities and outcomes can vary based on so many factors.

Especially question what the supposed experts say.

In many fields, they are making it up as they go which is fine as long as they say so and not presenting their knowledge as absolute. Or they are masking their lack of real knowledge through obfuscation and complexity. Or their circumstances and the variables effecting their insights are so different to yours that they cannot be taken as representative.

That’s not to take away from those that have spent a lifetime studying in a certain field and built up a body of knowledge that is vast and worthy of being listened to. Or it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t believe statistically valid results that have been proven time and again.

Just be cautious of the pernicious tendency to believe what others say just because they present it well, or have a huge following on social media, etc.

Trust nothing, verify everything, do it yourself if you can and learn from your own experience.