My 4th-grade teacher, Miss Bogner, a wonderful woman, and teacher, once told our class that ignorance occurs when you don’t have access to information and that it deserves empathy and understanding. Once you have access to knowledge and refuse to inform yourself, any expectation of empathy or compassion dissipates. She called them “willfully ignorant.” Those words have always resonated with me, but they take on a special meaning in these tumultuous times.
Ironically, we live in a time where access to information is limitless. Still, the attributes that validate that information, like history and expertise, are not only ignored but attacked and abhorred, even in matters of life and death. The inaccessibility of information no longer victimizes those people. They are perpetrators of lies, conspiracy theories, and denial. They create and seek information that supports their hateful, myopic world views, and it’s destroying the fabric of a functioning society.
It’s not ignorance when millions of Americans vote for a failed reality show host that has exhibited enough of the symptoms described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to rename it the Donald Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. They assume many in the media give supporters of Donald Trump a pass for their support of Trump as if he somehow pulled a fast one on them. Hell no! It was clear from the outset that there was not one redeeming quality about this man, let alone any qualifications to be president of the United States. His failures have been spectacular and on display for all the world to see. As a New Yorker, I can speak to most New Yorkers’ animosity toward him.
What do most of these Americans do after four years of corruption, incompetence, and destruction? They doubled down, and 70 million of them voted for a second serving of chaos. Not one of these people can claim ignorance. No, the people who supported him did so despite decades of evidence that he is a sociopath. They knew what they were voting for. They were voting for a sense of superiority that absolved them of any responsibility for their antisocial behavior and beliefs.
It is not ignorance when as of this writing, more than 850,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. Yet, there are tens of millions of Americans that manufacture justifications and causes so they can deny scientific facts and nor their social and civic obligations to one another.
The most vocal of these groups consist of people that have selected a devastating global health crisis to protest efforts to minimize the impact of the pandemic. Is this resistance due to a lack of information and messaging? Of course not. So much of this was and is preventable. The information and evidence are there to establish the efficacy and effectiveness of vaccines, masking, social distancing, and other preventative measures. The problem has never been accessing accurate information; it has been the unwillingness to accept it. In 1918 the influenza pandemic was beaten back by employing measures that have been in use this time, and they didn’t even have vaccines, treatments, or therapeutics. Fortunately for them, the majority of parents had one agenda, and that was to protect their children against a debilitating disease.
Before social media’s explosion and the news outlets were transformed into entertainment and profit centers, the source of the information you absorbed was important. Expertise and experience were paramount, and there were generally an agreed-upon set of facts. Those facts would determine the validity of meaningful public debates, and if you veered too far from those facts, they disinvited you from the discussion. Even conspiracy theories were different. The foundation of any conspiracy theory was questioning the official version of events due to unanswered questions, lack of transparency, and alternate interpretation of facts.
In an earlier time, many people would have rejected such unhinged conspiracies. They should be dismissed as ludicrous, but today, they are given oxygen by social media platforms that monetize lies and chaos and a news media that has incorporated the legitimization of these views and the normalization of the people that support them in their business models. A perfect example would be the assassination of President John F Kennedy. Could you imagine a major studio making a movie about a conspiracy about vaccines serving as GPS instruments or John F Kennedy Jr. returning to Dallas to run for office with Donald J. Trump back then?
Willful ignorance is one of the most significant obstacles and threats to our democracy and our society. The choice to ignore, deny, or lie about facts and history will be, has been, to the detriment of all Americans and, if continued, will lead to our demise. How do we combat and address this problem? I do not believe that you can convert people with a divine belief in their supremacy; that’s a fool’s mission and a waste of time. The problem is not only the willful ignorance of our adversaries but more damaging is the silence of our allies, many of them well-informed. Those voices must be encouraged to speak out.
If your value system or worth is defined by devaluing the worth of another individual or group, you are neither a Christian nor spiritually grounded. If you can’t acknowledge that climate change is an existential threat resulting from human activity, you are being willfully ignorant. If the mere mention that racism and “otherism” are at the very core of the hate and division in our country is anathema to you, then you are being willfully ignorant. Lastly, if you choose to deny and attack reputable sources of information for the sake of obstructing and undermining progress, your willful ignorance contributes to the chaos and destruction of our society, and you are part of the problem, not the solution.
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