Why are we so ignorant?

I hope this a fair question. Why are Americans so ignorant? Not stupid, ignorant. Stupid has to do with ability, ignorant is a choice. It is the choice not to see what is around us or learn what the truth may be.

Lets look at this another way. How much more of this world would you be aware of if you tried? How much are you capable of being aware of? How often when presenting and argument do you quote an expert rather than the source?

Part of the answer is that some people are incapable of understanding anything, it is a small amount. Truly retarded or mentally disabled are a small fraction of the population. One does not need an IQ of 130 to read the newspaper or retain what is read. That means the vast majority of us are ignorant for other reasons.

Some people have limited or no access to information. Some people live in the depths of the Amazon or Papua New Guinea, the vast majority of us do not. To again ask my question another way, why do so many Americans know as little about the way the world works who are not mentally disabled and have access to news, books and the Internet?

Now some people will complain that they don't have the time. I guarantee that if you spent less than one hour a day reading you would begin to understand the world better. One hour well spent will change your world and I am not talking about your local paper. How many hours a day do you spend playing video games, exercising, watching television?

We are over occupied and call it entertainment or leisure. This is a symptom not the cause of our ignorance. We are ignorant by choice. We choose not to spend the time or choose not to investigate. We want the answers rather than to work through the facts to determine our own answers. We want an expert to tell us so that we don't have to do the work.

Another reason we remain ignorant is because we like to believe that the world is simple that things are the way we have been taught. As we grow older we become biased and begin ignoring things that go against our ego and our own agenda, we only want to know what we need to in order to get what we want, we think we get it all.

The older I get the more I do know that what I know is severely limited in scope and in depth. That has been how people have historically felt; but, not anymore. Now people get older and think they understand everything. They do not even want to consider that the world is not as they believe. Challenge their beliefs with facts and they become indignant, challenge their view of themselves and they become irate.

I began this blog with a question about existence. The only thing we can really know is that we exist, the rest is perceived. That single statement condemns all other beliefs to be conjecture, not fact, conjecture. Science teaches the opposite. It teaches that all we perceive is real and that we are momentary. Up is down and down is up.

Our ability to perceive, even with all the tools and science in the world, is so pitifully limited as to be laughable. We are ants looking at a world and can never understand that we are part of a universe. Do you really believe we understand the universe, do you then believe that we will not learn more about it in the future?

There are people who claim that we are going into the Age of Aquarius, they say we are on the verge of a great "spiritual awakening". If we are, we are unprepared. Most of us don't even know what the Lisbon Treaty is or what the Council on Foreign Relations is, how can we hope to understand more when we don't even understand the basics?

A child being exposed to trigonometry is incapable of understanding it if he does not understand basic math. I often ask very intelligent systems people, "Who owns the internet?" None have answered me correctly. I previously posted about this and it is still on the blog, so I will not repeat it. They don't know because they believe it is not relevant to what they do. It doesn't get them anymore cookies and people only want information that will get them cookies. Relevance.

Relevance is shorthand for, "Will it get me what I want". My response is that all knowledge has value. A philosopher is a lover of knowledge, a scientist is a lover of answers. They lie, scientists do, they tell us that in order for something to be accepted as truth it must be repeatable and then they tell us that the big bang theory is true. Yet, it is not repeatable. I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the big bang theory, it is the lie that I question.

Eventually all science and all experts reach the end of their understanding, of understanding things through their single lens. Egyptologists cannot explain why the Sphinx is at least 5,000 years old and predates dynastic egypt (geologists versus egyptologists, experts against each other with no common ground). At some point in time, true understanding requires challenging precepts as our understanding of other things grows. Well, I have to cut this short and snore. Nobody to hear so it doesn't matter. Be well.