A few weeks ago, I had a serious earache. No, it was not because of air current. And yes, my ears are clean. I treated myself with painkillers for a week but I began to feel slow, and thinking has become difficult. So, I went to the doctor. She consulted me and told me it was due to my cervical spine. She gave me a dispatch for a CT and a prescription for some painkillers.

On my way home I thought that I would not do a CT and that I would better go to a few massage sessions (I sit the wrong way, in recent months I slouched quite a lot while working).

I solved the earache in the end.

However, I was thinking: how often do we come to believe that we know better than a doctor (in this case), a professional in other fields?

If we think about the rules imposed during this pandemic, we have, apart from our Minster of Heath, a scientist, a WHO representative, who tell us what we need to do, when to wear a mask, what the distance between us should be, and yet…we do not listen. We know better than anyone else.

We do not have respect for any authority. They completely lack credibility, and for many, only their own experiences or opinions of those close to the matter.

It is not a change that happened in recent months. It is a phenomenon that has endured for a long time.

Given that many sectors have been politicised for so many years, they have been populated by people that have nothing to do with the respective fields, and as such we ended up not trusting the authorities.

I am not saying that we should not be critical. But to demolish everything because ‘we know better’ could prove to be a dangerous strategy. We need researchers, people who study, who are experienced, specialised in certain fields; they are our guides when we do not know something.

Let’s think about it:

  • Do we want surgery made by our neighbor who read on Google how to do it?
  • Do we want, for our child, a psychologist who did not go to school, or paid to pass the exams?
  • Do we want a French teacher for whom ‘forkolition’ means fork?
  • Do we want our house built by someone who only used Lego blocks to build something?
  • Would we leave our car to be repaired by someone who has worked his entire life on the field or at a grocery store? Or a French teacher, who has not driven a car?

If the answer to these questions is No, if we, in turn, want to be considered professionals and for people to trust us, it is time to trust and respect: teachers, doctors, engineers, actors, architects, researchers, journalists, psychologists, builders, all of those who have studied a lot to have those jobs. And, of course, to reject the demagogues, those who pretend to be good at everything, the false values.

When I was a child, my mother made separate the white rice from some grains that, she said, did not belong in the package: a sort of separating the wheat from the chaff. After finishing sorting, I was confident that the rice was good.