Ignorance (ˈɪɡnərəns). Noun. Definition: lack of knowledge, information, or education; the state of being ignorant.
This post will not follow my usual style, in which I introduce a topic, and then build up my thoughts about it to a conclusion. No. This post starts out with a feeling, a frustration, and aims to follow that in which ever direction it goes. So you and I will be coming to terms with my thoughts about the subject matter together, in real time. I hope I don't lose you.
I have a question - can an educated person be ignorant? According to the definition I started with, ignorance is the lack of knowledge, information or education. So that suggests that someone that is educated is generally not expected to be ignorant. However, is it always the case that an educated person is knowledgeable, or informed? No. I am sure most of us have met PhDs that were totally clueless outside their area of specialisation. So we can assume that being "schooled" does not automatically make one informed or knowledgeable. But shouldn't a person that has gone through the schooling process know what they don't know? Given the magnitude of information in the world today, shouldn't a "schooled" person know that they cannot know everything, and hence are bound to be uninformed about many issues? And if a schooled person comes to that conclusion, then shouldn't humility be the natural outcome? Hence, we can infer that we are all ignorant to some extent, and are anything but humble when we try to come across as otherwise. Repeat after me, "I'm ignorant, you're ignorant, and that's okay."
I know a lot of things from books I have read. I have second-hand information. When I was young we had two books I remember quite well - one was about origami (the Japanese art of making objects out of paper), and the other was about "soccer" (it was an American book). I devoured those books, but I am not an origami master or World Cup winning footballer today. Was I ignorant about origami or soccer? No. I had knowledge. I was informed. I had read the books. I could point you to the page that gave intricate details on how to make a paper crane, or kick a ball with the instep. Or to the page that explained how Pele went wild when he scored his 1,000th goal. But I could not, and still cannot, make a paper crane (I can kick a ball with my instep though, but am hundreds of goals from 1,000). Am I ignorant about these things? No. Am I skilled in these things? No. Hence this suggests one can be educated, yet unskilled. One can have knowledge, but be clueless about how to apply it. This suggests to me that there is second-hand knowledge, and first-hand know-how. One comes from reading, the other from living. Hence a schooled person can be ignorant on two levels.
So since I am ignorant on at least two levels about many things in the world, how am I to get by? How am I to survive? How am I to become a success? We'll come back to this; I feel like going on a tangent.
How is it that with all the social media sites and news channels, we are all still so ignorant about each other, yet think we have each other all figured out? When next you are at a party, listen to the conversation about other countries. Better if you can shadow someone from an "exotic country" as they mingle with other people in the party; the display of ignorance may amaze you. And it's not just the ignorance, but the confidence with which many may state their misinformed views. Why do people find it so hard to say, "I know nothing about this except what the mass media has told me, and I know it's all likely bullocks. Now, you tell me the real deal." Perhaps it's because they don't want to know the real deal. It's too much work, you see. It's better - and easier - to pretend to have information just because you saw it on CNN or Fox News. You can't be accused of being ignorant if you know what the mass media says about an issue.
We are losing all sense of humility. We think we know things, but we don't know anything, at least not really. Real knowledge doesn't come cheap. That's why people spend five years earning PhDs, and even more years become doctors. Would you allow someone that's spent a year in med school to operate on you? Intuitively you know they can't be very good because they haven't spent enough time acquiring the second kind of knowledge I talked about earlier. So why do we think the sound bites we hear in the news make us informed? We are engulfed by information, but lack real knowledge, whether of the first or second kind. People don't even read whole books any more; they want the cliff notes versions.
I think we need to slow down as a race, and stop trying to do so much, stop scattering ourselves, stop spreading ourselves so thin. We cannot know everything, and there's no point pretending we can. We are all ignorant in one way or another. But it's one thing to be ignorant and to know it, and it's quite another thing to insist on portraying one's self as educated, which in reality usually just means "formally schooled". Before the advent of formal schooling, learned men (they were usually men) invested time getting the second kind of knowledge I talked about in their areas of interest, and they usually continued well past their 30s and 40s. They didn't stop learning. Now we go to school for a couple of years, learn, graduate, and some of us hardly pick up a book post graduation. Not only do we not pursue knowledge in a disciplined, consistent fashion, we also seem to throw humility - the basic acceptance that we do not know - out of the window. Many of us become unteachable, stuck in our ways, never questioning our deeply held beliefs and assumptions.
Interesting. I didn't know I had these thoughts. I wonder in what ways I have been guilty of the same things I have just mentioned. Running out of juice here. Need to take a break. Let's just call this part 1 of whatever number of parts we eventually end up with...
