Ignorance is bliss. Fact. It's one of the reasons we all reminisce about childhood so much; it's the land of not knowing, not understanding, not feeling pain (or at least not as much). It's that innocence where your greatest worry is that your crayons are melting on the backseat of the car, or that your friend has a better beanie baby than you. When you can sit at the bottom of the garden and forget everything around you while you talk to your ant “friends”, and not feel weird just because everyone else your age is at Brownies. Who cares what they think?
Supposedly, we all leave this ignorance of the real world behind at childhood, when we grow up and mature we are supposed to learn, to understand the world we live in. We're supposed to engage in politics, local issues, be concerned about nature, and read about the world around us so as to create a better understanding of life. Unfortunately, however, no one seems to care anymore. About anything. A culture has developed in Britain where nobody bothers to think. We have become obsessed with pointless trivia and we don't pay attention to what's important. It says a lot for our country that more people voted on “Big Brother” than in the national election.
I admit I'm guilty of it, too. After a long day it really is just easier to collapse on the sofa and watch some tasteless panel show or flick through a magazine than attempting to read a difficult book or a proper newspaper. But what is easy isn't always what's best, and at some point we have to make a choice between what is easiest for us and what is right.
In many ways ignorance seems logical, and an excellent survival technique. Reality is a very scary thing- the world is a harsh and cruel place, and humans are tiny and insignificant. To look up at great swathes of stars coating the sky at night and realise that our sun, something of such great importance, something we depend on so much, is just one of millions- billions,- who knows how many stars there are out there- is terrifying. To consider how there could be uncountable other solar systems in orbit around those stars, which seem to us just to be tiny specks of light, really puts the significance of ours, and the significance of our planet, into perspective.
Perhaps humans have evolved to be ignorant because if we realised just how unimportant and pointless we all are we wouldn't survive, we would lose the will to. It's why we love to imagine there is a God out there who cares for us and will protect us, despite the fact we see so much cruelty and pain in the world. Hope allows us to survive. Hope and pretending. But when pretending goes so far as to be ignorant it causes problems.
In George Orwell's “1984”, Big Brother made the claim that “Ignorance Is Strength”. When I first read this argument I remember feeling stunned by how much sense it made. Now, however, I think that ignorance is for the weak, and is the cause of all evil. We allow evil things to occur when we are not aware of them- children will happily eat from KFC because they do not realise the pain and suffering caused to the animals that are factory farmed in terrible conditions. The selfishness and cruelty of the factory owners is a reality from which they are protected. They do nothing to stop it, because they do not know. Their parents, on the other hand, or other people who eat from KFC and similar “restaurants” are either are ignorant in that they do not know, because they haven't read or learned about this cruelty, or are ignorant because they know of it but push the information aside, because, again, it is easier not to think about it. Yet we can see that although it is easier, it is not right, because this ignorance causes such horrific mistreatment of animals who have a right to live happily.
Similarly, we all know that the world is being severely damaged by our actions and contributions to global warming. Yet we still do nothing. This is why ignorance is not strength, is never strength- because ignorance, something which in some ways has allowed us to survive so much cruelty, could cause the human race to be destroyed. It is easier, and certainly more blissful to allow ourselves to be ignorant, but this cheery masquerade will not be able to withstand the destruction of our planet due to global warming, or impending World Wars between the East and the West.
We need to think- we need to learn, to read, to consider, to be able to adapt- something humans are very good at. But the culture where no one reads, where no one is interested in current affairs, where we hear the suffering of a neighbour but do nothing to stop it, is not one in which the growth of a more intelligent race can occur. The brilliant philosopher Bertrand Russell said “Most people would rather die than think; in fact they do.” No one wants to die, in which case, we must force ourselves to think, difficult and more painful though it may be. Because the ignorant life, filled with celebrity trivia, pot noodles and colourful plastic Santa's is not reality. In reality, plastic is flimsy and can be broken. And it is.
But sadly Ignorance is just as much a survival instinct as taken care of the problem.
People like to be comfortable within there own sphere of understanding.