Ignorance: the most hazardous building block of society.

Ignorance is a small word with an explosive and dangerous principle contained within. Ignorance is the sad and unfathomable condition in which an individual or a society is deficient in the most very basic building block of progress: knowledge. The utterance Ignorant is a mere expression of our language to depict this awful state, and it is understandable that the word can be used as a corrosive insult. Once, a philosophy teacher told me that the worst insult you can offend a woman with is to tell her that she is ugly, and the worst insult you can affront a man with is to tell him that he is an ignorant. Now, within the simplicity of this short but powerful word there is some inbuilt sophistication and intelligence which discriminates between the levels in the peaking order of the scale of the very fiber of ignorance.

For example, we have pluralistic ignorance that shelters the ignorant masses so no individual stands out. If you are an ignorant, it is OK because everyone is an ignorant to some extent. This herd mentality conducts to conformity, perpetuating ignorance, and handicapping intelligence. In psychology and specifically within social psychology which is an interdisciplinary area of psychology, there is a field that studies the dynamics of interaction of people and groups, and it is called pluralistic ignorance.

The dynamics of pluralistic ignorance play in a process which engages a group of several members who individually assume that they have dissimilar perceptions, beliefs, ideas, concepts, or attitudes from the other members of the group, or that their perceptions and ideas differ from the group as a whole. This phenomenon causes to coerce an individual, and to reinforce his or her keenness to coincide with the group’s archetypal mentality rather than articulate their own discrepancies and thoughts. In some cases this paradigm leads an individual to subordinate his or her individual behavior, and induces intellectual alienation and emotional dependency. These individuals should get acquainted with the Abilene Paradox.

Then we have rational ignorance. Rational ignorance in reference to an issue or a matter resides in deciding if the cost of learning and acquiring oneself knowledge in regards of an issue or matter adequately to formulate an educated decision, will outweighs prospective benefits. If the combine cost of arriving to a level in which decisions are made based on knowledge would be higher than the benefits, it would be irrational to spent resources in doing so, therefore, we will not waste efforts. This attitude have great consequences for the significance and usefulness of decisions, and in the ability of intervention made by a substantial number of individuals in situations such as popular elections, where they think that the probability of their personal vote to change the outcome of the election it is infinitesimally minute. This might conduct to apathy, and to the proliferation of herd mentality polarization.

There is also what is called vincible ignorance, where the individual excuses himself from ignorance by the fact that he, or she, was ignorant of the fact or facts that were the source for causing an issue. In other words, they boast that they are not guilty of breaking the law because they did not know the law. They missed the fact that not knowing the law is a crime in a civilized society. Vincible ignorance can come as a result of the premeditated denial to work out or consider a particular point of view or canon. A disciple of vincible ignorance will tell you that you are completely wrong, and it does not matter what you say, you will still be wrong, and that he (the disciple) does not need to convince you otherwise, because he (or she) know he is right. It sounds just like your mother-in-law, doesn’t it?.

Another sticky area is superstition, or fallacy ignorance. This is the most stupid and absurd form and tool of ignorance that there is, because superstitious people insist in being ignorant, turning their flawed beliefs permanently into invincible ignorance. Superstition ignorance is the equivalent to the unrestricted blind faith and, for instance, the voluntary and unobstructed acceptance of an unfunded urban legend. In fallacy ignorance, no one muscle of the brain has been trained to flex into rationalization. Individuals who posses these mythological brains, have been completely drained of their gray matter, and the empty space left in the cranium have been filled up with mushy saw dust.

Ignorance has many children that are better suited for the environments of “Resident Evil” than among members of an educated and intellectual society. There is no positive efficiency in ignorance, but deep social impacts and ailing effects on the mass population who embraces it. Some of the most unwanted and dangerous children born from ignorance are vice and crime; paucity, flustered and erratic families; general misconduct, and an unavoidable loss of civility. What is shoddier is that ignorants do not realize that they are carving for themselves a permanent place in the foundation of intellectual slavery and rational submission.

Regrettably, poverty breeds ignorance. Poverty it is not a personal fault or an individual’s blunder, and poverty can be conquered because poverty is a state of affairs that can be changed, a state created mostly by circumstances, and circumstances can certainly be altered. Ignorance is like a virulent disease, it is highly contagious among weak minds, and it is incisive in the cultural stocks of our planet. Ignorance is fed and nurtured mainly by ourselves, and fostered by our human incapacity to defeat laziness. Ignorance is a very personal enemy, and possibly the most dangerous private element one will have ever to deal with.

The Erudite Ignorance
The ignorance of something for a prodigious mind is not ignorance. The uncovering and acceptance of the ignorance is a well-educated, erudite ignorance. The corrective action against ignorance turns it into knowledge, and ignorance is defeated. Our natural intellects are attracted to discover, and always attempting to comprehend the incomprehensible. It is the natural instinct of the intellect to survive ignorance. Our intellects have an unpretentious aspiration towards higher wisdom. The erudite ignorance is never transcendental, and our compulsion to attain wisdom does not come from the outer surface of our minds, but is instilled. The erudite ignorance dies to give birth to knowledge.

Knowledge is not lack of ignorance, but it is made of what we do not ignore. The very first step towards ignorance is to presume we are not ignorants. When we ignore what we should know, we walk towards ignorance, and if we do not know well what we should know, we are idiots. Sometimes ignorance brings about a positive outcome. Perhaps friendship would be stronger, and love would be deeper with more ignorance than knowledge. However, unlike ignorance, knowledge is evasive. Ignorance does not breathe in an instant or live in one thing, but it is an ongoing process in action, and while knowledge liberates the mind and the soul, ignorance chains and slave the intellect and the spirit. And there is more: while ignorance is heavy, bulky, and noticeable, knowledge is quiet and does not occupy any space.

The British natural philosopher Sir Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626), the son of Nicolas Bacon, the Lord Keeper of the Seal of Elisabeth I, who later became Lord Verulam and the First Viscount Saint Alban, in a bright philosophical momentum of epitome, coined the memorable sentence: “Knowledge is Power”, setting forever the diametrically opposite vectorial orders between knowledge, and ignorance. The opposite speed of these vectors (Ignorance and Knowledge) also increases in mathematical progression deepening every second the abyss that separates both of them.

Perhaps knowledge as a whole it is difficult to attain, however, it is infinitely more difficult to pinpoint the birth of an idea, and ideas are the bread of progress. Ignorance feeds into itself, an easy survival strategy that requires no effort or imagination. The best advantage of ignorance is that ignorance is never complete; there is always room for more ignorance.

Ignoramus
Ignoramus is the name of the principal character – a silly old common law lawyer - of a classic, mordant, but accurate satire of the English legal establishment written by George Ruggle in Latin, and first performed in 1615 for King James of England (and also King of Ireland) who was delighted with the play. Ruggle’s play was designed to ridicule even further the already ludicrous language of the common English law, and the bizarre stupidity of the always nonsensical, however “academical” lawyers of the epoch. The medulla of the play is based on real trials involving a legal dispute between the vice-chancellor of Cambridge University (believed to have been Samuel Harsnett, Bishop of Chichester) and the mayor of Cambridge, then Francis Brakin. This revolutionary but real play did irate and scandalized the legal community then, and still incensing them now, because of the same hard-die stained characteristics of yesterday’s and today’s lawyers. So, if you really want to insult someone, just call him (or her) a lawyer! This is not prejudice but reality. Lawyers hold their own ground on this matter because their never-ending preceding reputation has been fail-safe over and over by their own actions.

Ignorance always speaks in a vitriolic tone to progress. Is it envy?, or is just flat ignorance in the arts of communication? Vitriolic tone is one; voluntary blindness is another. This is a known example by you. There are infinite offers in internet and TV of “medicines” that will “cure” you of your sicknesses. This “medicines” carry some side effects that are read to you in a very high speed, or placed in the add with achondroplastic letters that you normally do not understand, disclaimers you can not read or listen to, or are too dull to comprehend.

These advertisement producers and the concoction makers they represent want people to believe that if you ingest that medicine you will be healthier and feel better, but they purposely fail to mention that the “medicine” they are offering will not cure you at all. Just for the record and to prevent law suits, they warn you that you will have a ton of negative side effects, in fact; too many to even try it safely. Whoever offers this is an accomplished ignoramus, however, within the “Ignorance Kingdom” there are plenty of mentally blind (ignorant) footmen that will follow this unadulterated rubbish, and still take the “medication”. This is an excellent example of a money motivated individual cleverly disguising an empty argument born out of unfathomable ignorance, and espousing it as science for their own financial benefit, and for the health demise of the idiots.

Ignorance it is omnipotent. It touches everything and everybody, and the only vaccine against it is knowledge. Nobody knows exactly what bring intelligence into being, but in any case, intelligence need to be developed, groomed, and polished it. In a sense, a “do it yourself” gift but without the customary “Owners’ Manual”. And there is more to this. You have to be at least PG-13 to start taking some advantage of good old knowledge, and to start retaining some usable pieces of it. On the other hand, the free endowment of ignorance comes naturally and in a complete packet. It is a wall-to-wall carpet for the black hole of knowledge that dwells unperturbed in your delicate brain.

Tele-Vision (or very small screen)
Perhaps television is the most hedonistic contributor to the cultivation of the disease of ignorance. Tele-Vision is a much undeserved title for the myopic vision and for the lack of intelligent forethought that this medium perpetrates against us. Have you lately observed the programs being unashamedly put on air? In forensic communications, many of the programs that are being broadcasted daily classify as forcible intellectual rape, and not as a syllabus program. Why then TV is so appealing to so many? Because a few ignorant stories is often and exactly what the anthropogenic ignorant needs! The ignorance within their shrunken brains thrives with mindless programming. Some of today’s TV programs are so deeply ignorant and senseless, that hurts when the brain drool that they produce comes out sluggishly through your nose!

Some think that ignorance pays off, or does it?. If you would like to experience an out-of-the-body encounter at your own intellectual jeopardy, just watch almost any TV program. For example, there is a TV program where a gang of rappers (a celebrity panel is what they like to call themselves, however RAP is CRAP without the “C”) gives outrageous, disgraceful, and bamboozling answers to questions chosen from a dunce cap that can hold more knowledge on itself than what the panel and the audience altogether can. Members of the audience try to give the correct answers to stupid questions, but the collective ignorance is so immeasurable that I can hear the TV set pitifully moaning. Some call it “entertainment”, however, an individual who has suffered mental castration by ignorance, can not possibly give an intelligent opinion. As for the rappers, they just make public their ignorance. There is not worse ignorant that the one that makes a public display of his or her ignorance! Ignorance pays all right, but it pays to those who milk the ignorants that watch and participate in those shows. The public has fun though, but remember that laugh is abundant in the mouth of the imbecile.

Political Ignorance
Oh, boy! There is so much to write about political ignorance! Political ignorance engenders nepotism via rational ignorance. Most people are colossally uninformed about politics; nonetheless they are very opinionated about it. Political ignoramuses ask often, what you know about politics?, as if they know anything at all. The best answer to this question is to raise your three middle fingers, and ask them to read in between the lines. This is the appropriated and balanced communication aim for their steady level.

Political ignorance deforms opinion about candidates. Famous people, for whatever they are famous for, have a better chance to triumph in politics because the unconscious ignorant masses worship them as gods. The civilized populace would love to give the Nobel Prize of Ignorance to Paris Hilton, but at no avail because she would not know what the heck it is, and what she is supposed to do with it. When she talks to herself is fine. When Paris Hilton starts answering herself becomes a bit awkward, but that still fine. The problem befalls when she starts interrupting herself!

Political ignorance is the forcible rape of democracy by the ignoramuses, and it is also self-inflicted intellectual terrorism, and an embryonic liability to civility. The political ignorance of the ignorant ends up electing our leaders and frankly, they deserve them. Political stupidity and ignorance turns our governments into cheap circuses and when emergency strikes, we end up with a bunch of Acab Kings, democratic or not, trying to resolve the accumulation of their own political excretion, and at this point, the only difference between those places and the Titanic, is that the Titanic had a band. All of this causes a political numbness that paves the way for more political ignorance whose echoes can be heard bouncing off the parietal lobes of the ignoramuses’ empty skulls.

What now?
No person can force other individual or a group to face their inabilities, and to recognize how their individual ignorance impinges on their flawed perceptions and thus, makes the outcome of their unbalanced actions not only unpredictable, but flat wrong. To efficiently overcome ignorance they must understand themselves, appreciate their own value as human beings, weigh up their personal central place in our society and the intrinsic value they hold in the bounds of their spirits, and avoid all the shoddy fundamentals listed herein in this document. Never forget that ignorance is a colossal might to reckon head on with.

The Adversaries of Ignorance
Ignorance is the precept that perhaps has more enemies against it than anything else within the logical reaches of the human scholar cosmos. Conceivably, the biggest foes against ignorance are knowledge, freedom, democracy, and self determination. Of course there are more adversaries of ignorance contained in the ranks of counterparts against ignorance, but they are too many to mention and to put in perspective here, so I will just concentrate in the Sergeants Major of the Drum.

Knowledge is an open virtual connection within a narrow, but multi-complex relationship between two or more notions. Intelligence connects and makes sense of the relationships and togetherness of these perceptions, and renders what we know as the concept of knowledge about things. To know, or not to know? That is the question. The answer to this incisive philosophical question is that you better know, or else is going to cost you. Here is an example. The boiler of a man’s shop stop working, and the man could not make it start again, so he called the repair man immediately. The repair man arrived shortly after to the shop. The repairman appearance was more like a forced breed between a hillbilly and a redneck with an apocryphal accent, and he walked like someone with severe bowel obstruction. Anyway, the repair man entered the shop and took a close look at the boiler. After a few “hums”, he turned around and headed straight back to his truck. He returned back into the shop a couple of minutes later with a big slash hammer. He positioned himself in front of the boiler, spit out on his hands, and then grabbed the hammer and bang!, he banged the boiler hard. The boiler coughed a couple of times, shivered once, and after it heave a deep sigh started working again.

The shop owner was thrilled with the simple fixing realizing that he could get back into production immediately. The shop owner asked the repairman then, “how much I owe you?”, and the repairman responded “Five hundred and five dollars”. The shop owner looked at the repairman in disbelief, and added “What? You have been here for less than five minutes and you are charging me that much? I would like an itemized bill, please!”. The repairmen without any perturbation took out a pad, and begin to scribble on it conscientiously. After a few seconds, he handed the itemized bill to the shop owner. The bill read: 5 dollars for the wear and tear of the hammer, and 500 dollars for knowing where to hit. End of the story.

Sometimes knowledge does not need to be highly technical, but practical. In any case, knowledge is a power to be harnessed as soon and as much of it as you can.

Freedom is a dream of fantasy some might say, but others say that to live after dreams is the real and truthful thing. There are also those who think that religion and politics are the opium of the masses. So the whole thing it is just a matter of personal opinion. In spite of whatever your personal definition or conception of freedom is, freedom lends us a flexibly empirical platform with some pragmatic and adaptable frontiers from where we can cultivate and grow our minds and our indomitable human spirit, even if freedom is a faux assumption that only exists in our mental power.

With the concept of freedom embedded in our intellect we are empowered to search for the ultimate thing, for the highest thought, for the farthest frontier, for the smallest of the small, and for the fastest and more elusive dreams. Freedom is like an internal power engine on super steroids that allows us to think faster than the speed of light, and give us the possibility to leave ignorance behind us eating our dust, the dust of knowledge, that is.

Democracy allows us, like freedom, to share and discuss our thoughts, concepts, wants and do not wants without being killed by an ignoramus. I remember the first time I casted my vote ever. It was for Presidential elections in the US, and shortly after I became a proud citizen of this splendid nation. I was 38 years old at the time, and I had never voted before in my life because I lived under a mental castrated dictator who will kill anyone who opposed him without any dilation, someone who never liberated his brain from a Spartan psychosomatic constipation. Yes, there I was, standing on line. It was about 4:00 AM and I was the first in line. I was wearing my biggest smile, and enduring a very cold morning. At about 5:00 AM a lady came to the voting place and started to set up a table to sell pastries, and she said to me “the polls do not open until 6:00 AM, how long have you been here?” “I know” I responded, “I came here as early as I could. And you know what?, I can vote for whoever I want to, and nobody will shoot me dead for that, is that right?”. After a silent pause she retorted, “I guess so…” and started to walk slowly away from me looking at me with distrusted askance. She probably thought that I was some kind of psycho, one those people who you should never interrupt and keep on telling them “Yes!” until the ambulance with the straight jacket arrives.

In my mind I was savoring democracy… It was not who I was going to vote for, it was that I could be exercising a “right” (look at that!) without being killed on the spot. I felt like I was being defiant against the democratically neutered shithead dictator, and no one could do a thing about it! What a trip! I was exercising freedom and democracy at the same time, while I was freezing to death, but I was also feeling a reinforcing peace within, an excitement I had never experienced before! The knowledge of freedom and democracy had turned me into a tremendously powerful human being. After I casted my vote, I walked home feeling abysmally sorry for that inferior dictator and his dictatorial ignorant extravaganza. I just had walked all over the face of the dictator and his minions with total impunity, and I liked it! This happened long, long time ago, but I still have the same sarcastic smile on my face today, and I still walk tall, and I will never walk in any other way.

To have a sound and solid self determination, you also have to have will power. Self determination by itself it is not articulated to be fully functional, it needs your will power. Self determination also feeds on knowledge, freedom, and it can thrive wild within the walls of democracy. Self determination builds independence to grow the untapped human potential that is dormant, but restless inside all of us.

Self determination epitomizes the righteous right for people of all kinds and walks of life to pursue and establish their own financial, social, and enlightening development, which is great, but how will you do that without knowledge, freedom, and democracy to put these elements into positive effect? The right of self determination is an instrumental factor in pursuing the road of opposite direction to ignorance.

So, ignorance has many enemies, but these enemies need to be organized and activated against ignorance. Ignorance has a leg on us. Ignorance was given to us free of charge, it was a gift, but with a hidden price tag. We all are ignorants to some degree. Ignorance is not our fault, but we will be guilty of doing nothing to reduce it to the smallest degree we can possibly do within our wherewithal and possibilities.

Ignorance incline but does not obligate, and ignorance has two distinctive directions. I understood this a long time ago when I observed two small embarkations with sails navigating Lake Titicaca in the highest Andean borders of Peru and Bolivia. Although the wind was blowing in a southern direction and both ships were navigating simultaneously, one boat was navigating south, the other, north. This did look gawky to me at first, but recognizing the type of sails in use, I understood the effects of wind mechanics at work, but more important, I visualized in my mind the two very real and contradictory directions of ignorance. The ignorance was represented by the wind, the boats represent us, and the sails, the will power. It is a lot of work and effort to navigate opposing the wind, but it can be done. Going in the conflicting direction of the wind is going in the direction of knowledge. The easy way is to follow the same direction of the wind, the direction of ignorance. You need to decide what direction you are going to hunt, then use your will power, and the rest will be ancient history.

In the struggle against ignorance you have to take a ferrous and sustained attitude. You know how it goes: “Attitude is everything!” and that is about right. You have to become somewhat like my son’s little dog “Roxie”. Roxie is a little Yorkshire Terrier that has an admirable attitude about certain things. Every time she hear someone knocking the door, she gets tremendously excited and runs swiftly towards the door because she thinks that whoever the visitor is, is coming to see her. She barks and jumps of anticipation until we open the door and she realizes that the visit is not for her. Then, she goes back to whatever she was doing before the knocks at the door. Roxie does this every single time she takes notice of a knock in the door, and with the same exhilaration every time. I can see the uncontained expectation in her little eyes hardly visible among the hair that covers them. Roxie does not know that the visitor is not coming to see her, and that will never be. However, she keeps (and will keep) doing this forever. If we can take Roxie’s attitude against ignorance we will be able to counter it every time. We need to have that sense of urgency, that enthusiasm, that thrilling level, that drive to combat ignorance, every time, like this is it, this is the visit for me, this is the last chance and it is mine, and it has to be because there is no tomorrow. Dogs might be stupid in that sense, but for sure they have something to teach us about attitude.

Ignorance is the foolish devastation of knowledge, and ignorance is not a stigma or pathology, but a contagious chronical disease, a terminal disorder for the human mind, a mental jail without chains, walls, or bars, an embarrassing entanglement between philosophical existentialism, relative consciousness, and the cognition of conscience. We must know the difference between rights and wrongs before is too late. Why? Here is an example. Two ignoramuses were walking down a dirty street when one of them did see a brownish semi-solid substance, of cylindrical form, and coiled on itself. Here is the dialog:

Ignoramus 1: “Look!, Chocolate!”
Ignoramus 2: “No!, It is crap!”
Ignoramus 1: “Are you sure?”
Ignoramus 2: “Well, it looks like it”
Ignoramus 1: “I am sure it is chocolate”
Ignoramus 2: “The only way to know is to taste it”
Ignoramus 1: “You try it first”
Ignoramus 2: “No, you do it first!”

The Ignoramus 1 tried a sample with his finger and said:

Ignoramus 1: “It tastes weird for chocolate, but it is chocolate”
Ignoramus 2: “Let me see… Hum, yes, it tastes kind of crappy chocolaty, does not it?”
Ignoramus 1: “Let me try again”
Ignoramus 2: “Let me try again too”

The ignoramuses repeated their tasting trial several times until there was not much left of the brownish semi-solid substance of cylindrical form coiled on itself.

Ignoramus 1: “I can not decide!”
Ignoramus 2: “Sorry man, but I really think this is crap!”
Ignoramus 1: “Maybe you are right!”
Ignoramus 2: “Maybe? I know I am right!”

After trying once more, Ignoramus 1 says:

Ignoramus 1: “Yep! You are right! It is crap!”
Ignoramus 2: “Good thing we did not step on it!”

Sometimes the pursuing or discovering of the naked truth might not take someone along the right road, or the company you might have in the pursuit of the truth might not be the most appropriated one. The point is that the more ignorant you are, the easier it will be to fail even in the most basic and mindless situations.

As soon as our limited human and ignorance-fragile minds can learn about the reign of freedom of the captivity of ignorance, they will flight wildly liberated and unbounded towards knowledge, freedom, democracy, self determination, and of course, to the glorious, safe, and trustworthy bastions of civility.

The Good News
The good news are that every one of us is capable (not necessarily willing) and equipped to strappingly defeat ignorance. Unless you have a strong Oedipus complex propensity toward ignorance, you can indubitably defeat it. The many efforts you will invest on your personal behalf during your epic journey en route for victory will be costly, long, sustained, hard, sometimes bitter, and it will take a lot of discipline, but the rewards you will conquer will surpass every unfeigned effort you did put on during your road to knowledge. You need to do this. You owe it to yourself. You do.

A Public Apology
My written expression of the English language throughout this pamphlet might not be the best, or perhaps it might sound “ignorant” to some, and this humble servant can accept that. The only excuse I have to offer for this dearth of language is that English is my fifth language, and I have not mastered my command of it to an acceptable level of knowledge just yet, and I sincerely apologize for this ignoramical deficiency.

To close, I would say that this conceivably unusual trend of un-standard philosophy on the subject of ignorance is a pet project belonging to the free thinker portion of my soul of Renaissance Philosopher and Thoughts Trader. And yes!, I do contraband assorted and random judgments and tangential perspectives brought to life by unforced caesarean, from between the active and prolific sphenoids of my mythological Cerberus’ skull, to graciously launch them into the mighty Internet for both, the enjoyment and torture of the structured extrasensory human wisdom, and with a bit of luck, for the non-impaired judgment of the creatures who lack ignorance.