“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”
— Bertrand Russell
“The problem with incompetence is its inability to recognize itself.”
— Orrin Woodward
Like you, I’ve been watching friends and acquaintances go after one another online with the same recycled takes on the latest predictable—or conveniently manufactured—controversy. Each current event becomes a referendum on national decline. Any headline can morph into amateur constitutional law. Takes on DEI, foreign policy, vaccines—nothing is too complex to be resolved in 280 characters, preferably accompanied by moral urgency and a link to a partisan source no one will read.
The cynic in me asks: Who appointed you? Who authorized you—doomscroller, catechized by cable news—to determine when immigration becomes immoral, how election security is assessed, which historical narratives deserve canonization, or which media outlets are to be labeled heretical? What, exactly, qualifies someone for this level of cultural adjudication?
One possible answer: Dwight K. Schrute.
Rainn Wilson’s portrayal of Dwight on The Office is brilliant precisely because Dwight is so convinced of his own authority—and so oblivious to its absence. Formally, Dwight is the Assistant to the Regional Manager. Informally, and incessantly, he seeks to assert himself as Assistant Regional Manager. He nominates himself for security detail. He volunteers as a sheriff’s deputy. He posts new office rules that no one follows. He delights in surveillance and enforcement, convinced that order itself depends on him. Dwight is not a good hang.
Dwight is obsessed with a warrior ethos for which he is singularly unfit, spending years and thousands of dollars pursuing a black belt that inspires neither fear nor respect. He is diligent in narrow ways but categorically gullible, naïve, and chronically unaware of his own limitations. His bravado far exceeds his competence. Raised in an insular bubble, he lacks the self-awareness necessary to recognize how little authority he actually possesses. For all his effort, he produces exponentially more annoyance than he does influence. It’s comedic gold.
And that’s the comforting part. Dwight reassures us. Thank God we’re not that guy. Thank God we don’t confuse confidence with credibility or mistake self-appointment for legitimacy.
But here’s the uncomfortable possibility: what if we’re more like Dwight than we think? What if we’re not in on the joke—but are instead unwittingly the punchline?
To be clear, many issues matter deeply. Addressing them is not the problem. It may be morally necessary. The problem is something closer to the Dunning–Kruger effect: low ability overestimating itself; armored with confidence, baptized in moral language, and amplified by platforms that reward certainty and drama rather than wisdom. What we are witnessing in public is not merely division but deformation—of judgment, discourse, and the virtues required for social cohesion.
This is the rise of the Facebook deputy and the Twitter sheriff: self-nominated authorities armed with fragments of information and an audience just large enough to feel consequential. Like Dwight, they crave the power to define, enforce, and correct—without the slow, often stretching work of impartial discovery, and grappling with the prospect of being inadequately informed.
If that is the diagnosis, then the real question becomes: what does sobriety look like now?
Humility and Expertise
At minimum, it requires the recovery of two endangered species: humility and expertise.
Humility restrains the impulse to take our opinions too seriously simply because we have strong feelings and a platform. It teaches us to listen longer, examine ourselves critically, and occasionally practice staying in our lane—something almost entirely foreign to the digital life. Expertise, meanwhile, demands formation: patient study, multiple perspectives, submission to reality, and deference to those who have actually borne the cost of knowing. In our moment, that combination is extraterrestrial.
Dwight didn’t need more confidence. Neither do we.
What we need instead is restraint—the kind that flows from acknowledging the difference between having an opinion and having standing.
Before deputizing ourselves as cultural authorities, a few considerations are worth serious reflection—preferably, before we post.
Competence and Position
Does your education, experience, or standing qualify you to speak authoritatively on this issue? The question is not if you are “interested” in the topic. Nor is it whether or not you have strong feelings about it. Interest and outrage are not qualifications.
If you have never studied, traveled, or meaningfully encountered what you are diagnosing from afar, issuing definitive verdicts on immigration, geopolitics, or public health may not be in your wheelhouse. Teachers should not instruct pilots on flying. Mechanics should not moonlight as epidemiologists. Decades in sales won’t magically confer expertise in history curriculum.
And yes—especially for those of us who have moved through the world without being seriously challenged, profiled, or threatened—it is worth pausing before assuming our vantage point is universal. Perspective is not necessarily disqualifying. Ignoring it is.
Input and Bias
If someone who disagreed with you examined your media diet—your searches, subscriptions, podcasts, and algorithm-fed feeds—would they find curiosity or partiality? Do your inputs regularly challenge you, or is it possible that they’re indoctrinating you without realizing it? If you’re feeling especially brave, let an independent third party, like Ad Fontes Media, audit your sources. Brace yourself.
You are being formed. So am I. Denying that formation is how we mistake parroting talking points for independent judgment.
Supply and Demand
Are people actually asking for your take? Once again, the standard matters enormously. The issue is not “are people ‘liking’ your take?” The fact that people are being outraged by your take is not validation either. The relevant question is “Are people asking for your opinion?”
Truth be told, no one asked me to write this specific piece. I wavered on whether to submit it for publication. However, students, congregants, and acquaintances regularly seek out my advice on how to engage our chaotic moment. Perhaps this is my way of answering the call. Perhaps my hypocrisy is only partial.
In what I hope is enough contrast, Facebook deputies and Twitter sheriffs are entirely self-appointed. Loud does not mean necessary. Confident does not mean persuasive. Being online does not mean you are needed in the Situation Room.
Limitations
Each of us has, at best, a narrow band of genuine competence. Mine happens to include education, theology, media literacy, and making uncomfortable observations that are occasionally valid. Outside those domains, I am profoundly unhelpful. You do not want me near a furnace, an operating table, or a quarterly sales target.
Recognizing limits is not a weakness. It is maturity.
It may offend modern sensibilities to say this, but it remains true: not all opinions are created equal. People share equal dignity, but public judgments are not equally credible. If everyone is an expert, no one is. We can be sincere and yet wrong. Passionate and ignorant. Some speak because they have something to say; others speak because they simply have to say something.
So, what if the way forward is not more reactionary posting, louder pronouncements, or increased certainty?
Perhaps it is this: Attend to your work and stick to the things you actually know.
Beets. Bears. Battlestar Galactica.
Learn deeply. Speak carefully. Consider refraining. Wait to be asked.
Because credibility—the one thing Dwight never managed to secure—does not come from asserting authority.
It comes from embodying it.
