I am often amazed at the things people do or say. Every time I think the level of ignorance in the world is at its lowest, someone somewhere does something that makes me reconsider whether or not there really is a limit to how ignorant people.
Now, I have often heard people saying that others choose to be ignorant. This certainly does appear to be true in a lot of cases. Especially with the amount of people who, when faced with new facts, discoveries, or evidence that may contradict their beliefs on certain subjects will outright refuse to even consider the possibility or discuss the matter further.
And with the rate of growing technology and how fast such information is becoming available to us, it's hard to imagine that people will still choose to be ignorant.
I wonder if they will eventually find a gene within some people that makes them inherently unable to receive certain information?
But regardless, back to my main point... :)
I also find it hard to believe that people would purposely remain ignorant. I know we are all born with a lack of intelligence, and as we grow our intelligence grows. But sometimes it seems as though people's ignorance grows as they grow.
So I pose the question to you, do you believe that the ignorant people in the world really have a choice in the matter? Are they choosing to remain ignorant?
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I think the level of ignorance people live in depends on their circumstance. Probably many people who live in ignorance don't choose that path, but some people are completely ridiculous and make a conscious choice to be ignorant.
I guess it all depends.
-S
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http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/shirleymu07
It's a little bit of both, some people choose not to face the reality they have to deal with. On the other hand there are a lot of people who honestly don't know. Let's say for example,hypothetically and I stress the word hypothetically, I discover and I can prove that there is no god. People would still choose to belive despite the fact that it would have been as clear as day, and hard to disprove. Others wouldn't like it but they would eventually accept it once they...well knew. So yes I think some people do choose to remain ignorant, it's a part of our culture after all. I'm not the best at explaining things haha.
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I dont think people dont make a concious choice to be ignorant. Its how people think that keeps people "ignorant."
Why dont people accept new facts that surface? Its simple. its because these facts contribute with their already established ideas. People think in terms of what George Lackoff calls "frames". And basically its a certain pattern of thinking and beliefs. If something comes along that goes contrary to the already established frame, that frame isnt changed the fact or ideas are rejected or ignored. This explains why their are such huge disagreements about issues like abortion, Creationism vs. Evolution etc.
That's a very interesting thought, thanks! I assume something like this would be covered in a sociology class? I've taken several sociology classes to date, but none have covered this type of behavior. I'll have to go check out what I can about this.
But I do have a question for you; would this type of thinking be growing as of late, do you think?
I mean, to use your working example of Creationism vs. evolution, we all know the Bible has been rewritten several times over to allow for changes as people became more aware of what was going on around them (i.e. the inclusion of "dinosaurs"). But despite the knowledge of it having been rewritten, people seem skeptical now about rewriting it again. Like when they found the Gospel of Judas; seems to me the easy thing to do would have been to rewrite it rather than claiming it to be a hoax or the work of Satan. *Shrug* it's worked in the past...
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"Dream as though you'll live forever, but live as though there's no tomorrow" --James Dean
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I dont think that this type of thinking is growing, I think its pretty much the same as it has been in the past. To use another religious example the geocentric view of the universe was suspected by science to be false for hundreds of years and it took Copernicus (or Galileo I forget which)to finally prove stellar parallax and prove his heliocentric model of the Earth orbitting the Sun to be correct. Yet, still the church refused to believe this until Pope John Paul II claimed it was correct.
It wasnt a new idea, it was just people were ready to accept this into their frame and view of the world. Psychology also has a term for this patterned thinking but I cant remember what its called. Basically, I think ignorance is the result of 2 problems.
1) Refusal to believe new information or information which conflicts with ones beliefs
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2) Refusal or inability to learn do to lack of resources, lack of interest or lack of capacity.
I dont think people want to rewrite the Bible because then a lot of people would really realize how completely unreliable the Bible is in terms of accuracy about the word of God. Once something is rewritten over and over it kinda loses the original meaning and becomes unreliable. Its like the Bible is a sort of Wikipedia for Faith where you can edit out the stuff you dont like and change it to say what you want it to say. In this case I think its that people dont want to muddy up the meaning anymore and thus are hesitant to rewrite it, not because they dont want to accept the new ideas.
We all live incredibly ignorantly. Even the simplest device is beyond the knowledge and understanding of the average person. The workings of our governments and economies are completely incomprehensible. The most basic physical principles are beyond the understanding of most people, and even those who study their entire lives only understand a tiny slice of what there is to understand.
Our entire world is almost completely beyond our grasp. It always has been. We have told ourselves stories and created religions to try to explain it. Then we found ways to study it and explain it, but some of that conflicted with the stories we had told oursleves previously about how everything worked.
Think about it. Could you build a microwave given the necessary parts? How about a car? How about just an engine? Does anybody in the world actually know how the government works? How about the economy? Do you know how a refrigerator works? A television? A particle collider? A nuclear bomb? Try explaining what God wants from you.
Sure, people choose to be ignorant and ignore ideas that contradict their view of the world, but it comes pretty naturally. It is our natural state. We have huge brains that can't possibly be filled enough to make everything make sense.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.