Ignorance, the Misunderstanding
When I talk about ignorance (esp. in relation to fear), I am not talking about casual unawareness, like "Oh, I don't know anything about that."
I'm talking about this:To call these people stupid is to insult stupid people everywhere who are honestly trying to use what intelligence they have. This is not the kind of stupidity you are born with. This is the kind of stupidity you have to work for. It's the kind of stupidity you get by taking all your nameless fear and senseless resentment and spewing it out in every which direction, to latch onto whatever it finds. This is the stupidity you get when you start out with ignorance and the fear that ignorance naturally creates, and then refuse to make the effort of doing the sensible thing and reducing your ignorance, and thus also your fears, through learning what is real and what is not - and instead you just cling to whatever scraps of prejudice and conventional wisdom are handy, and defend them for dear life.
This is ignorance.
And let's highlight baeraad's choice of words: "you start out with ignorance and the fear that ignorance naturally creates".
People need to learn how to respect fear as a negative force in themselves, I think. I think that's the most effective way to persuade people to actively attempt to be more knowledgeable.
The funky thing is this.
My model also accounts for ignorance that moves towards acceptance. (Fear is ignorance into rejection.) I was trying to capture the idea of blind obedience for a long while. But sometime late in 2009, I figured it out (there's a blog post with me going nuts [edit:] here[/edit]).
It's apathy.
You know. The word that describes 99% of Americans 99% of the time?
I'm talking about this:To call these people stupid is to insult stupid people everywhere who are honestly trying to use what intelligence they have. This is not the kind of stupidity you are born with. This is the kind of stupidity you have to work for. It's the kind of stupidity you get by taking all your nameless fear and senseless resentment and spewing it out in every which direction, to latch onto whatever it finds. This is the stupidity you get when you start out with ignorance and the fear that ignorance naturally creates, and then refuse to make the effort of doing the sensible thing and reducing your ignorance, and thus also your fears, through learning what is real and what is not - and instead you just cling to whatever scraps of prejudice and conventional wisdom are handy, and defend them for dear life.
This is ignorance.
And let's highlight baeraad's choice of words: "you start out with ignorance and the fear that ignorance naturally creates".
People need to learn how to respect fear as a negative force in themselves, I think. I think that's the most effective way to persuade people to actively attempt to be more knowledgeable.
The funky thing is this.
My model also accounts for ignorance that moves towards acceptance. (Fear is ignorance into rejection.) I was trying to capture the idea of blind obedience for a long while. But sometime late in 2009, I figured it out (there's a blog post with me going nuts [edit:] here[/edit]).
It's apathy.
You know. The word that describes 99% of Americans 99% of the time?