The Culture of Ignorance

Lately, I have run into a strange and unusual phenomenon of appreciation of ignorance. This Friday night I got into a conversation with a person I had not met before and at one point I mentioned how disappointed I was in our government's and lawmakers' twisted sprint to the megaphones to use the Norway Murders lashback to push through their own, crooked agendas. Interestingly enough, he replied "I don't know anything about that stuff and I don't give a FUCK."

Not giving a fuck about anything seems to be all the rage these days. After I asked the slightly ignorant dude as to why he doesn't know or give a fuck, he proudly proclaimed that he doesn't follow the news or events in the world, doesn't read any books, doesn't want to learn anything. My first thought was that he was some kind of pseudo-secludist - cutting himself off from "the world" and "Babylon". Then it became apparent that he actually did read something: tabloids and Internet forums. Again, he proclaimed his hatred towards immigrants (the dark-skinned ones) and how all of our country's problems would be solved if they just "got the fuck out from leeching our system". Now, it had previously become apparent that he himself was unemployed and had been leeching the system for years - alas, something he was proud of.

This is not the first time I've run into willingly ignorant people. They simply refuse to learn anything new in life. They just want to go on about their business like "normal people", day in, day out. This is simply something that I can't and probably will never understand as a person who always wants to learn more about the world and ourselves. The key in this rant, however, is that although ignorant, these people are often highly opinionated. As they refuse to take in new information, their opinion becomes a fact.

How do you argue with a person in the wrong, who strongly believes in his own opinion as a fact, while you on the other hand possess the knowledge to set him straight but simply cannot break the barrier of ignorance. While these people could be left on their own, to continue their subfound ignoramusness silently by all themselves, they lately seem to have a knack of airing out their opinions well-enough to the other ignoramusses and somehow even make their to parliament. We now have a person up there running things, who doesn't know shit about the world and spouts unintelligent statements daily. Interestingly enough, the other fools who voted him in are happy about having an idiot in our governing system.

Where does this end? When did these people get so entangled about "going about their lives" that they refused to want nothing more in their lives? I know a lot of people, who don't want to go abroad, ever. They believe our country is the best in the world and has anything one could need, completely missing out on the broadening of the mind brought on by travel, insinuating that Paris or New York are just some "towns".

Years ago while returning home from Rhodes, I was seated next to group of ignants on the plane. They discussed in length how much Greece sucked. Listening in, I learned that their opinion was a bit loosely based, as they had only left the pool area of their hotel once during a nine-day vacation. In their hotel restaurant, run by a huge conglomerate chain, they hadn't tried a single Greek dish, scared of it having colera or other killer bacterias and went on to eat french fries with meatballs with a side of Finnish rye bread every night. The one time they actually went out on the town, they went to a Finland-themed bar to watch hockey, drink Finnish beer and sing Finnish songs in karaoke. Sitting in the plane, they unanimously claimed that traveling is costly, stupid and unnecessary - "We have all we need in Finland". It made me baffled and so sorry for them, but now I understand that I should feel sorry for myself for not understanding that this ignorance has become prevalent everywhere I go.

This phenomenon has quite certainly been around since the dawn of time, but with the rise of the Internet, these people are starting to gain momemtum en masse all around the world, sprouting their ignorance wherever they will. I don't really understand if there's anything to be done to stop this sickening glorification of insisting ignorance.

Well, I guess don't know enough about it to give a sincere fuck, so I'll just go read a book on the subject.