Willing Ignorance is Stupid

This blog may step on some toes. Then again, it may not. It depends entirely, I suppose, on who reads it.

I have noticed something recently while conversing with people younger than I and even with a few of my own generation and older. There seems to be a tendency now to see thinking as hard work best left to specialists.

Once, some time ago I admit, I happened to ask someone what they thought about some religious something or other. I’ve forgotten what the topic was now. I do remember her reply as it went something like: “Oh, I don’t think about such things. It’s too hard.” And this was someone who went to church, well, religiously. I left the conversation wondering, whose job it was to think of such matters? Preachers, philosophers, Popes?

I have had similar discussions with people about science, and unless we are talking about cars, computers, cell phones or televisions, I often get a similar reaction. “It’s too hard to think about!” This is true especially if you try to get into the basic science, the physics, of why the car, computer, cell phone or television work.

Now, I am the first to admit that I really don’t need to know everything about the science of a vehicle in order to drive it, or a computer, cell phone or television, in order to use them. But at least I do know a smidgen of the basic physics behind and involved in why and how they work.

I also fancy myself a writer and I happen to be a darn good reader. I should be able to communicate with others. However, I have found my self boggled by the blank looks I sometimes get when I use a phrase or quote that I considered to be old fashioned and so hackneyed that surely everyone knows it. The looks I get are often those of confusion, as if the other person was wondering what the heck I meant. They seem confused even after I explain myself. For example: surely everyone knows the quote “…The plans of mice and men, oft go astray…”, and what it means. After all it means just what it says: you can plan all you want but it won’t always work out. I used that as an excuse for not being able to go to an event when I called to make apologies for not being there. From the reaction I heard, I do not believe they understood what I was trying to say until I rephrased it. I was not talking to a child but to an adult. Okay, a young adult, but still one old enough to have run into this quote at least half a dozen times I am sure. If only in old movies shown on TV or such. Going through school she must have run across the quote, or even read it in books other than text books, in magazines or newspaper articles. Providing of course that she is not like many of her fellows, and that she actually does read something other than what she absolutely MUST read.

And that brings me, at last, to the reason for this blog. If you have read my earlier blogs you may have even waded through my rant on the economy and how it simply is not sustainable. A good part of the blame for that unsustainable economy lies with big business. No, it is not a conspiracy! Neither is the problem I am going to try to point out with the link between education and big business.

In both cases, the unsustainable economy and the dumbed down population that big business needs to survive, what has happened was not really planned. I believe it occurred as a kind of positive feed back loop like those that resulted in the Gaia principle.

It came about this way: Big business needed workers that would work long hours at simple, repetitive, jobs for little pay; sometimes in harsh conditions, without complaint or question. As schools got bigger and had more kids to educate they had to find a way to ‘make more product, more efficiently’(more graduates) and there was the answer right there in the thriving big businesses around them. Thus, “I’m not paying you to think, Jones! Shut up, and get back to work or get the hell out!” became, “Johnny! Sit down, shut up, and do your lessons! Stop asking silly questions or you‘ll be sent home with a note from the principle!” If Johnny did not comply he was a bad student, got bad grades and dropped out to become a burden on society, with some notable exceptions I’ll mention later.

The ‘good’ students did well, grew up, graduated and went to college and got degree’s. Then, most of them got jobs in big business, in industry, and earned the expected amount. A salary they then spent, through credit cards and such, buying all the stuff that the commercials on T.V. and the ads in magazines told them they had to have to be seen as the successful people they had to be. Even those who only got a high school degree went on into some business or other, though they got paid less and did even more ‘rote’ work than those who had gone to college to become their supervisors. Both groups married at some point, often several times, had kids and started the cycle all over again. Thus supplying big business and the modern economy with two of the three basic things it needs to survive: (1) an ever growing supply of obedient, easily manipulated workers and (2) an ever growing supply of easily manipulated, and obedient consumers. This also resulted in the schools having ever more ‘product’ to deal with, often with little funds, thus forcing educators to treat the little tykes even more like identical products on an assembly line.

Yes, I know. Far more than public education figures into this. Indeed, if you stand back and just observe, as I have the habit of doing, you can see how even religions have a part in this. Even the supposedly rebellious, and independent minded, protestant religions have begun to place more responsibility for what they believe on their leaders than on the individual believer. How can I say that? Simple. That discussion with a friend I mentioned above. The one who declared such thinking to be ‘to hard’. So hard that she had to leave it to her preacher who “knows so much more about such things.”

Sadly, I recently saw a report on the TV News about a survey that proves that woman’s point of view is still alive and well. It was done by asking various people questions about religion. Not what they believed, but about the known facts of their religion and others. The only group that seemed to really know facts about religion were the Atheists and the Agnostics. Oh, dear reader, if you don’t know; there is a difference between the two. Atheists say there is nothing there; no heaven, no hell, no God, Son, or Holy Ghost. Agnostics, on the other hand, say they just know there is Something there (Agnos is derived from ancient Greek and means ‘knowing’) they just don’t know what It is, exactly, and some believe It is simply unknowable, whatever It is.

This willful ignorance in both things private (like the various religions), in business and in politics gives those who are ‘in charge’ of any of these spheres great power. It gives them great power because they become the ‘authority’. In many cases they become the authority in both senses, in that they are the ones expected to know all about what they are ‘in charge’ of and the ones who make sure everyone toes the line and obeys orders.

This leads to workers believing that, because the boss said so, it is a good thing to have all of their retirement tied up in company stocks. Heck, they even feel lucky about it! At least they do until the company goes belly up and they go from having a multi-million dollar retirement fund to being paupers. It also lets priests of any religion tell certain followers that some of the little ‘favors’ they want them to do for them are commanded by God and if they don’t comply then they will have sinned. I don’t say that all priests do this, far from it. But the temptation is there and some will believe that as they are, after all, the ones carrying such responsibility; they should get at least some perks. The same temptation faces the various managers in big businesses. Though there and in politics it is even more evident and more expected, if just as fiercely hidden.

This same willing ignorance can lead to women getting completely unnecessary hysterectomies because some doctor said they needed one. For the same reason, I have known people to get sicker or even become psychotic because various doctors gave them different medicines and they blithely assumed that if the doctor prescribed it, it had to be okay. The just didn’t ask the different doctors or the pharmacist about the side effects or how the various meds might react with each other. After all, why ask? Doctors are all knowing and all wise just like the preacher in the pulpit, the boss at work, the teacher in the school or the politician in office. And like those authorities they are never to be questioned.

What can we do about this will-full ignorance?

First I think we must all admit that quite often it is the ’bad’, the troublesome, students that have the most smarts, the most to contribute. After all the guy’s who originated Apple© and Microsoft© never earned university degrees. They got sidetracked into building multimillion dollar, even billion dollar businesses. We also have to get ordinary folks to realize that lack of education does not have to equal ignorance. It should be also be made known far and wide that, unlike stupidity, ignorance is easily curable. All it takes is a trip to the local library or logging onto the computer and doing a search with your favorite search engine. There the difference between stupidity (a.k.a.: willing ignorance) and unwilling ignorance will become clear. One group will find out everything there is to know about their favorite model, movie, or rock star; down to what they are doing that very second; and the dust on the thinking machine in their head will just get deeper. The other will look for answers to some of the harder questions of life. They might look up their own religion and then wander on to read about others, and other topics. They might get a bit boggled by what they read on that or all the conflicting views on global warming. Then they will just naturally dust off that really fine computer inside their heads and start using it to think about what they have read. They might even find out that using that brain not only feels good, but it is also fun and rewarding.

Unfortunately, there is no real cure for this willing ignorance that we are faced with that so many prefer. That is because it is so much easier, it makes life so much simpler and worry free if you don’t have to think. Because, after all, if you think for yourself you will occasionally run across the thought that you just might be wrong. After all you are only human. Hold on to that thought, tight. Expand it. Those AUTHORITIES I mentioned above; the preacher, the teacher, the boss, and yes, even the politician or scientist? Guess what. They, too, are only human. They can be as wrong as anyone else. But believe me, of all of them, it is usually only the scientist who is willing to say, “Oopsy, I may have gotten the decimal point a little off there!”

And what, I ask you, is wrong with that? With admitting that you were wrong or made a mistake? Or even with changing your mind, especially if you base it on what you believe to be sound data?

That is a trap we often put our ‘authorities’ and ourselves in to. We don’t want them to change their minds or be swayed by some other ‘facts’ that may come along, even if they happen to be better, or more factual than any that came before. This kind of reaction, this refusal to allow for change of mind or anything else is tied back to the foolishness of willing ignorance. It is characterized by the old saying “ I know what I know and I don’t want to be confused by the facts!”

I say there is nothing wrong with changing your mind, your religion, your political party or your brand of toothpaste. Some are more serious changes than others, that’s all. All such changes should be well thought out, and considered before being acted on.

Except maybe the toothpaste. Toothpaste is just toothpaste, after all. Isn’t it?