Cocksure!

I love a tee-shirt I have seen women of color wearing: “Lord, give me the confidence of a mediocre white man.”

I can identify so thoroughly with that saying because I know how to speak confidently about stuff I know just a little bit about. It’s a confidence which was not earned by honest consideration and even-handed dialogue, but a surety born of arrogance. It’s what’s known as being cocksure.

Cocksure: /ˌkäkˈSHo͝or/ adjective. Presumptuously or arrogantly confident.

Why does it seem as though so many of us are so cocksure about so many things these days? I am starting to find that as I age, and as I listen to those who hold different opinions, I mean really listen and consider with an open mind where they’re coming from, that I grow less cocksure of my own positions.

This isn’t to say that I am beginning to become wishy-washy or uncomfortable landing on an issue. G.K. Chesterton says, “The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” It is simply to say that I have begun to appreciate the complexities of life and the nuances that exist on so many subjects.

This cocksurety is nowhere more true than around social, political, and theological positions. Is there no room left for learning? Cocksurety is an admission you have nothing to learn about a matter. It’s not that we must become relative about all things, it’s that we must not shut down the humility required for growth. Our sweeping damnation of other positions, our demonization of others, and our cocksure statements which leave no room for nuance or the validation of dissenting opinions is turning us into Neanderthals.

All hills are becoming hills for us to die on (or, more accurately, to kill on). We have little trouble dismissing opinions that don’t line up with our own stunted learning and in the process we have dismissed our own potential for growth. Give another perspective the possibility of growing and adapting our own.

The only thing I’m becoming more sure about is that we would all be better off with less cocksurety!