I'm often surprised by the number of people I meet in everyday life who exercise willful ignorance.
By this I mean, not only do they wish to not learn new things, but they purposefully expend energy to avoid doing so. They might even say something like, "I don't want to learn new things." They might even be insulted, "Don't teach me!"
I know the psychological and social reasons people have for adopting these or any paradigm, some of them have weight and can be problematic, require addressing, however most of them stem from laziness and that makes the phenomenon commonly stupid.
The surprise I feel when someone is willfully ignorant turns to anger because I feel that person is not living up to the potential he or she has as a human being and therefore is hindering the species in its entirety. This then becomes a question of responsibility.
We are all in this together.
If you find yourself ever rejecting new information, or worse yet, refuting established truth, or still worse yet, denying common knowledge backed by evidence, for any reason, please consider why it is you do so. Then try to establish if that paradigm has real value.
I'd hate to see the world go to shit simply because of incorrect assumptions.
By this I mean, not only do they wish to not learn new things, but they purposefully expend energy to avoid doing so. They might even say something like, "I don't want to learn new things." They might even be insulted, "Don't teach me!"
I know the psychological and social reasons people have for adopting these or any paradigm, some of them have weight and can be problematic, require addressing, however most of them stem from laziness and that makes the phenomenon commonly stupid.
The surprise I feel when someone is willfully ignorant turns to anger because I feel that person is not living up to the potential he or she has as a human being and therefore is hindering the species in its entirety. This then becomes a question of responsibility.
We are all in this together.
If you find yourself ever rejecting new information, or worse yet, refuting established truth, or still worse yet, denying common knowledge backed by evidence, for any reason, please consider why it is you do so. Then try to establish if that paradigm has real value.
I'd hate to see the world go to shit simply because of incorrect assumptions.
