This is a public service announcement to alert readers of this forum that there seems to have been an outbreak of the dreaded disease IKCY here at FFL lately. This post contains a description of the disease and its symptoms, instructions for how to protect yourself from it, and suggestions for how you can help others already affected by the disease to recover.
What is IKCY Syndrome? IKCY in an acronym for the full name of the disease: "I Know...Can't You?" Syndrome. (Its symptoms have been so widely diagnosed and understood that a corruption of the acronym has slipped into the English language. You notice someone behaving as if they have contracted IKCY syndrome, and you say, "Oooooo...that's icky.") The known cause of IKCY is attachment. It can be attach- ment to ideas, to political candidates, to a preferred religion or spiritual discipline, to a guru, to the legitimacy or supremacy of some technique (or research on that technique), or even to one's own notion of what state of consciousness one is in. Whatever the attachment, the *expressions* of that attach- ment -- the symptoms of the disease -- are always the same: 1. Declarations of the "truth" of what the IKCY victim "knows." These are *always* presented as "truth," with any other possible way of seeing the situation charact- erized by the IKCY victim as "ignorance," "intentional misrepresentation," "lack of knowledge," or outright "lies." 2. A sincere conviction that these things that they "know" make them better than the poor, ignorant clods around them who don't know these things. 3. An obvious attempt to SELL the same attachment that the IKCY victim feels to others. The need to proselytize the attachment is the way that this particular virus *spreads*. Its victims feel the need to convince others to become attached to the same things they are. If they succeed, the disease has claimed more victims. 4. The need to demean anyone who doesn't buy what is being sold. IKCY proselytizers almost always characterize skeptics or others who don't agree with and "sign on" to the same attachments they have as "hating" them, having "hidden agendas," being "ignorant," being "intellectually dishonest, being "unwilling to accept the truth." 5. Compulsion. The *extent* of this need to proselytize, and to demean those who aren't as attached as the IKCY victims is legendary in the annals of medicine. Heck, some IKCY victims have been known to make almost 40 posts to an Internet forum *in a single day* trying to convince others that "They Know" and exhort them to "know," too, by shouting the demeaning phrase "Can't You?" over and over and over and over. And over. Innoculation The way to protect yourself from the ravages of IKCY Syndrome is to repeat a simple mantra, passed down to us from old: "I don't know shit." The power of this ancient mantra is amazing. It can keep you from the ravages of "I Know...Can't You?" Syndrome. It can keep you from becoming an asshole in public situ- ations. Heck, it might even help you to win friends and influence people, who will actually want to be your friends in return because you're not always trying to SELL them something that they want you to become as attached to as they are. 'Nuff said. Just keep repeating "I don't know shit," and not only will you protect yourself from the ravages of IKCY Syndrome, you'll have a nicer life. You'll learn to become comfortable NOT "knowing" anything to the point of trying to convince others *that* you know it. And you'll laugh a lot more. Which brings us to treatment of the victims of this modern plague. Treatment Of The Afflicted Laugh at them. Watch them cringe as you do so. That is the virus which causes IKCY reacting with fear and revul- sion to the one thing that can kill it. Oh sure, some of the victims will pretend to laugh back, and even <guffaw>, but that's just bluster. The virus inside them is terrified, and is causing them to pretend that this heavy-duty antibiotic is having no effect on them. But it is. Every time they are laughed at, the virus that causes them to believe that "They Know" becomes a little weaker, and over time the compulsion to infect others with it will become weaker, too. Over time, if these victims are laughed at consistently enough and loudly enough, they may actually throw off the disease and become human again. Then they'll also realize, as we have, that they don't know shit, and that neither do we. We're all bozos on this bus, each of us wearing our big, flopppy clown shoes and red rubber noses and trying to make the best of an incarnation that came without a User's Manual, let alone a definitive Reference Guide. And we'll welcome them back when they recover, and we'll all be a damned sight happier knowing that none of us knows shit, and that that's OK.
