Ignorance: ignorance is a two part notion: not knowing with a certain attitude. 1
This article goes deep. It shows the sinister reason you insist on remaining ignorant.
A child who goes to first grade doesn’t know how to find another country on another continent on the map… and yet we don’t call him ignorant. He is in the process of learning that… maybe at fifth grade.
But if he doesn’t wash his hands after he uses the bathroom… we will call him ignorant.
Why? because ignorance is not knowing what you could be expected to know, given your age, your education level. Or not knowing what you are talking about and talking anyway.
So not knowing how cells produce energy is not necessarily ignorance, unless you are a health lecturer or you are someone who wants to get well.
Then ignorance shows through your attitude towards knowledge: you don’t need it, you say.
Arrogance, lack of humility.
And you talk trash…
If you are one of my clients who said you wanted to get well, but instead of shoring yourself up on the basics of biology, you read books on something unrelated, or you read articles on the internet and still have no basic understanding of what is happening in your body, then you are an ignorant person.
Ignorance has a flavor of forceful maintenance of ignorance… there is some gain.
What is the gain? You don’t have to be responsible… 2
Why is this forceful, willful, avoidance of responsibility?
I need all my empathic knowledge for this: I want to be responsible, and have always been this way.
But you, why would you not want to be responsible?
One of the hunches I have is that it’s an age thing. If you were responsible, then you would have to grow up. And you don’t want to. You want someone to take the blame for your actions. Your parents, your god… not you.
Remaining a child you can’t be tried as an adult, even if you kill. So you can just hang out, and enjoy life… being forever teenager or a criminal.
You are like a reed… nothing solid about you. And you want to stay this way.
I don’t see the gain… but of course I see the gain in being solid. I love responsibility.
Landmark Education says, and rightly so, that responsibility is your access to real power. Power over yourself, and effectiveness in life.
So if ignorance is refusing to be responsible for learning what you need to learn, then ultimately it leads to
1. criminal activity
2. no power.
And the world is full of ignorant people who teach people… and the ignorant listener cannot tell that what they are listening to are lies, or untruths or half-truths.
It’s been always like this, by the way. This is why snake-oil salesmen could make money… it needs ignorance.
The area of life where ignorance rules most is health. The second is the “power of your word” aka mindset… full of lies and half-truths.
The ignorant you gobbles it up.
Now here arises a really good question: as a consumer, why would you cherish your own ignorance? Why would you insist on remaining ignorant?
For the same reason as any ignorance: you have a hidden benefit: you don’t have to be responsible for your well-being. You can blame your genes, yourself, your government, the food manufacturers, or the seller.
All of this is behaving like a child.
Taking wooden sword to the gun-fight of life.
- If we looked deeper, we would notice that ignorance and lack of humility always occur together. I may write a similar article on lack of humility… but for now please know: you can replace the word “ignorance” in this article with “lack of humility” and it will remain 100% true
here is another take on this:What is willful ignorance?Willful ignorance is the state and practice of ignoring any sensory input that appears to contradict one’s inner model of reality. At heart, it is almost certainly driven by confirmation bias.
