As with every evening for the last 359, I am having my late night cuppa under the Dunning-Kruger effect. Indeed, it followed me down the stairs sixteen hours ago, and breathed over my shoulder ever since.
Developed in 1999 by two psychologists, it is a ‘cognitive bias’ that, to shred a major piece of scientific research into a convenient sound-bite, asserts that we are routinely bad at the things we think we are good at, and routinely better than we think at the things we believe we are bad at.
In my own case, this emerges as a constant feeling that my writing and cooking are rubbish, which reality suggests they aren’t, and a huge confidence in both my political antennae and cricket ability, which are both massively questionable. Rubbish, even. Indeed, if you wish to meet someone who has consistently made the diametrically wrong call on where Covid-19 is going, go no further than Park Cottage; but do so quickly and discreetly, as we are now in Tier 4.
On a wider scale, the same effect clearly applies to the global us. In the name of progress (which we are obviously good at) we have single-handedly created a sixth extinction era, viciously rising temperatures and sea levels, an uncontrolled market for our most private data, and even pineapple-flavoured Jaffa Cakes. Somewhere in Wuhan, either in a market or a laboratory, depending on which version pleases you, we have created a world-changing virus. At the same time, we have somehow managed to reduce global poverty rates by more than half since 2000 (U.N), and produced a workable vaccine within a year of the emergence of that unknown disease.
Meanwhile, Gilbert’s Theory of Automatic Believing which, at its absolute crudest, dictates that we basically believe what we are most frequently told, tells us that China has had a great pandemic, and that Angela Merkel, Nicola Sturgeon, and scientists in general have got it all basically right. We shall see.
Down in leafy Sussex, we have had a curious Christmas. It consisted of 25% of the household having Covid, and the other 75% trying exceptionally hard not to share it with him. This has led to tactics that wouldn’t shame an MI6 agent, with car keys in dead letter boxes, food parcels under boxes in doorsteps, and Zoom film nights with someone who, all the time, was 7 metres away, as the crow flies. One by one the promised treats receded into the night: the carol service, the family lunch, the mass Boxing Day walk. Like the gentle breath of leprosy, 2020 has been the gift that goes on giving right up to the last minute. Socially distanced, of course.
And yet, and yet, there is a gleam out there, Beyond the three small achievements of my year (giving up sugar in coffee, adopting on line banking and making a lamb biryani for the first time), I have finally learned how to expect almost nothing out of almost anything, which brings a surprising contentment entirely of its own. For the first time in thirty years, I have also allowed music to make me cry, albeit just a little. I love that. And I have been allowed into five new friendships that I feel utterly blessed by, which is riches indeed.
To those who are kind enough to tell me from time to time that they enjoy these pieces, thank you: you are all the encouragement I need. To anyone at all who reads them, I have never meant it more when I say that I wish you a safe, happy and positive new year.
All of us, in fact.
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