There’s nothing wrong with being ignorant. It just means there’s opportunity for learning.
There’s everything wrong with being willfully ignorant.
– Me
I wish I could upvote this 1000 times. I am ignorant of a lot of things but I’m willing to learn and even change my mind. Willful ignorance when someone chooses not to know something, even though the information is available, relevant to them, and often even presented directly to them but they plug their ears and go “la la la”.
Then you obviously have a completely different understanding of ignorance than I do. By that I mean someone who doesn’t want to know anything about a subject, or even someone who deliberately insists on their opinion against their better judgment.
So my understanding of ignorance is what you mean by willful ignorance. However, this may be because the term is defined differently in my native language (German): what you mention first is called “Unwissen” (not knowing) in German.
Yes, what you’re describing is what’s called “willful ignorance” here.
“Ignorance” is used to mean simply “lack of knowledge” in most cases in English. It doesn’t carry the negative connotation by itself.
I’m leaving the post up anyway, because “Unwissen” is also a very significant problem, even though I actually meant deliberate ignorance in the sense of what is currently happening so prominently in the US.
Post title works as-is, at least IMO. You can always edit it if you want.
You are correct.
It is actually ignore-ance, with the removal of the e at the end of Ignore to form a new word…
To ignore something is a willful action of deliberate inattention.
A lot of it is willfull ignorance.
I didn’t know that.
I feel like the people in power who take advantage of ignorance for purely selfish reasons is the root of the problem.
COVID taught me that all the knowledge in the world cannot overcome a certain mindset, and an alarming percentage of people are of that group. You can provide all the evidence and education in the world, and some people just can’t be helped.
Yes, that’s exactly what I mean by ignorance. It only occurred to me later that the term has a much more international meaning in my native language (German): what I meant was not so much a lack of knowledge, but the deliberate ignoring of facts, expert knowledge, or scientific standards out of selfish arrogance. I believe in English this is called willful ignorance - this distinction does not exist in German; for us, ignorance always means that someone deliberately ignores things because they simply do not suit them. And I think that this, or rather the fact that we allow it, is responsible for the precarious situation our world finds itself in today: people could and do know better, but they ignore the facts out of selfishness.
Don’t forget about greed, it’s the root of every problem that humans have.
The trust in institutions is gone too since everyone lies constantly. Presidents, space agencies, governments, everyone.
Without any trust that those institutions are correct and honest, people wont want to learn from them.
And then you have the social media perception bubbles, with algorithms serving you more of what you like, reinforcing any beliefs you have.
And of course on top of this, gender wars where you turn genders against eachother, so each human becomes even more stupid, angry and alone.
Havent even had my second cup of coffee and im already dooming stuff. Lol.
We must teach everyone everything!
That and emotional insecurity
Well, ignorance loves company and misery is bliss.
