Wilful Ignorance

Here's a caveat(ALWAYS wanted to use that word in conversation.) This may turn out slightly rantish, but I'm going to do my very best to avoid that. Touchy subject for me.

Now, moving on to the topic of the day. Wilful Ignorance. If you don't know what this is, it's basically staying ignorant, even though you could move beyond this, for different reasons. Wilful Ignorance, it seems, is especially common in politics and religion. Though, it can happen in anything. Here's an example, the Mac commercials. They just came out with a new one, about how bad Vista is. Well, that's been most of their campaign, but this was more specific. And people will take it at face value without every getting opinions from people who are on Vista, have used it, and have had time to develop real opinions.

I understand being ignorant about some things, well, most things. I'm pretty smart, and I don't know alot more then I know. A whole lot more. But I WANT to learn things that I don't know. If you show me proof, I'll accept it. Well, if it's interesting, I'll continue looking it up, and thinking about it, but I won't deny it.

There's a quote in this book I'm reading, I believe from Mao, that goes something likes this. "We shall disagree with our enemies always, whether they are right or wrong." It's worded much differently, but that was the gist of it. And people do that. Again, especially with religion and politics. If I'm conservative, and you're liberal, or vice versa...Whatever you say, well, sorry. It's wrong.

Why do people do this? Why do we need to be wilfully ignorant, often on the most important subjects? Because it's uncomfortable? So you contiribute to the awkwardness, and the need to actually have intelligent conversation about the subject. Nobody's perfect. Nobody will be perfect. But, you don't need to stop trying to better yourself because of this.