Ignorance is Bliss
A couple of especially depressing news items caught my attention yesterday (September 17, 2020). Apparently , a new survey has found almost two-thirds of young American adults do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and more than one in 10 believe Jews actually caused the Holocaust.
The next news item I read reported on a ‘town hall’ held by Donald Trump in which he spoke, in relation of the Covid-10 pandemic, of ‘herd mentality’. What Trump actually meant, of course, was ‘herd immunity’. But he hadn’t just made a slip of the tongue, because he used the same phrase three times.
Ignorance is lack of knowledge, information, education, or awareness. Today, the problem is not so much access to information, but discrimination, or what we do with all the information at our fingertips. In fact, paradoxically, there seems to be a direct relationship between high levels of accessible information and high levels of ignorance.
Research shows that lack of knowledge often does not motivate an increased, unbiased search for information.[1] This is because the brain's reward circuitry selectively treats an opportunity to gain knowledge about future favorable outcomes, but not unfavorable outcomes. In a nutshell, people seek information that will create positive beliefs, and avoid information that creates negative beliefs. People who feel uninformed or unable to understand important social issues do not therefore seek more information. Instead, they depend on what the government says, which is usually positive. This obviously increases their faith in the government. Consequently, this increases the desire to avoid learning about a relevant issue, when the information is likely to be negative.
Ignorance breed more ignorance.
But ignorance, conviction, and power are a powerful trio, and so I’m afraid Donald Trump will win in November…..
[1] Stephen Shepherd and Aaron C. Kay ‘On the Perpetuation of Ignorance: System Dependence, SystemJustification, and the Motivated Avoidance of Sociopolitical Information’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012, Vol. 102, No. 2, 264-280.
https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-102-2-264.pdf