Wow!

Wouldn't it be wild if this IS exactly what has been keeping gravity at its current constant?

I think ignorance is a learned behaviour ... we are born curious ... we are born with a thirst to learn ... we have an innate sense of expansion and growth ... just look at any 2 year old ...

...and then those precious little people are conditioned into mediocrity!

Welcome to planet earth little one ...

dont really care so much....

Ignorance is a choice because anyone can learn and there is much knowledge which is easily accessible. STUPIDITY is another topic. If someone is ignorant on a topic and they make a point of learning about it, that's cool. Stupid people give up on learning and expanding their minds!

YES, just tonight I was listening to a woman of great faith talk about going to college and doing a research paper in psychology class with a christian professor, but the questions that professor asked scared this woman . . . why? Where the questions really that hard . . nope standard psych stuff you just have to be open to human nature. But Because being curious and asking hard questions was frowned upon by the pious people she grew up with, the folks who KNEW they had all the wisdom they could even need written down 2 thousand years ago . . . .


This is an interesting point, but requires distinction.

You talk about ignorance and say its a choice, you can get edu macated, but then you say that "Stupid people give up on learning and expanding their minds!"

Well giving up is a choice. Even if the fight is useless you can choose to fight on . . .

I think it a a little of both although one can still get educated if they really want to. I tend to think that most will not consider you educated unless you have that piece of paper from some college or university, a person can if he wants to still acquire knowledge thru self study. However I tend to view experience as the best teacher.

It is a scary thing isn't it? And it doesn't just happen with religion...although a lot does seem to stem from there ...

I did not go to 'church' alot as a child but I do remember being asked to leave Sunday school once because I either asked too many questions or I didn't have enough faith ... I am really not certain which...

There was all this talk of sinning and evil ... and I innocently reminded the teacher that she said that God was in everything ... 'yes', she affirmed ... 'and God is good?', I asked. 'Yes God is good and wonderful', she replied ...

soooooo I asked what exactly that left out ...


Children carry the prejudices of their upbringing ... and if they are not allowed to question as children ... they will grow up not questioning ...

I think that is one of the great beauties of post-secondary education ... people have new opportunities to question and think and embrace diversity ...

It is a great injustice to limit a developing mind ...

ignorance is the lack of learning

not the lack of intelligence

the public school system is not teaching the future how the govt is supposed to work

and the average parent does not take the time to teach their children that the govt works for them (or is supposed to be)

this the public ends up not living up to its responsibility of keeping tabs on the govt

and the by product of this laziness is the govt erodes the rights guaranteed by the constitution

thus i guess no child is left behind in this thinking

you now like the animal shelter (we know what theanimal shelter really does)

i still dont care again.........sorry im an azz

Christopher Hitchens has made such a wonderful observation, its children who see through these things so easily, and ask the questions that illustrate such. Its adults that teach them otherwise.

you care enough that you want us to know you don't care ...

May we all see through the eyes of childlike wonder

This brings up an interesting point. It makes me think of things and meanings and knowledge that changes and how that relates to ignorance itself.

For example: Many people object to pronouncing the world "nuclear" as "nook-yuh-ler". Is this ignorance? Or is it simply the natural evolution of the language? (Or is there even a difference?) Another example might be the word "alot". This word does not occur in any English Language dictionary, but it is used extensively in online conversation and will likely end up being included in the dictionary eventually. (This is what happened with the word "alright".)

So really, the problem with ignorance is (like pretty much any problem) subjective. It has no intrinsic significance exclusive of context. If a scientist were to go to a meeting of astrologers, he would be considered ignorant. But in a college science class, he would be considered very knowledgeable.

The matter of choice applies here too. Is it a bad thing for him to have no desire to learn about astrology? The astrologers might think so, but the science students probably do not.

Unfortunately that seems to be true ... however, a college education does not 'make' anyone less 'ignorant' if one never takes the time for self reflection and analysis.

Some of the smartest and most enlightened people I know do not have college educations. They have a natural curiosity and a voracious appetite for learning in whatever form it takes ...

As a woman who spent 14 years working in a post secondary setting surrounded by academics, I can assure you that adding letters and degrees behind your name does not make you any less ignorant ... and sadly it doesn't necessarily make you any 'smarter' ... It was an absolutely eye opening experience ...

That said, the experience of attending post secondary studies can absolutely be life transforming ...

For me this begs the question, where does this drive in some come from? This quality to question and grow beyond conditioning and ignorance.

So I wonder then ... What is different between the person who seeks enlightenment and the one that does not?

Or is everyone seeking a path out of ignorance at their own level? I suspect so because we may not all agree on what even constitutes ignorance.

Why do some grow beyond their conditioning and seeming limitations while others do not?

Where does this drive come from and do we all even have it?

"Or is everyone seeking a path out of ignorance at their own level? I suspect so because we may not all agree on what even constitutes ignorance."
I would like to think this is true if only in intentions.

I think every intends to gain knowledge.

You seem to have turned the corner here from “ignorance” to “motivation”, which seems to be the real point of the OP. Technically, ignorance is defined simply as “lack of knowledge”. But as you pointed out, there also appears to be a cultural opinion that ignorance is directly proportional to (and maybe even defined by) that “desire to learn”.

Since ignorance itself is “situational” (e.g. the scientist and the two situtations of science class and astrology conference), I think it really can only be evaluated according to one’s personal goals. If someone only has the desire to know enough to do his job, pay his bills and manipulate the TV remote, then he cannot be considered ignorant outside of that context. I think you hit the nail on the heads with this:

But as you pointed out, the real question is one of “motivation”

My opinion…

I think that the motivation is inherent in us from the start but changes over time.

In general, children have voracious appetites for knowledge (“Daddy, how high is the sky and why is it blue?”)

Later in life, we tend to dismiss whole aspects of life with simplistic finality (“Those _____s are just a bunch of kooks.” “The subject of ______ is hogwash.”)

There is one thing that I think is a key factor that is mostly completely overlooked: simple misunderstanding.

A statement of truth is made. That statement is misunderstood by someone. That person tries to use the misunderstood data in their life and finds that it does not work. The next time someone else makes the same statement of truth, the person who misunderstood assumes the speaker doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and rejects other information from that speaker on the assumption that he is unreliable.

Now that scenario can be handled by simply asking the speaker if “such and such” was their intended meaning. Discussion will eventually (hopefully) reveal the fact of the misunderstanding and thereafter new information fromthat source can be accepted as reliable. No real problem there.

But apply this scenario to a small child in grammar school. How likely is it that a child would challenge a teacher as to whether or not a datum is true or false? So for the rest of his life the child continues to think his teacher was a fool and rejects all other information that is dependent upon the misunderstood information – ignorance blooms and flourishes.

None of this happened because of any intentional action by anyone. It arose only and entirely because of a misunderstanding!

IMO, this is the most important factor of all in the questions of both motivation (desire for knowledge) and result (lack of knowledge).

I think a large part of it is the lack of critical thinking skills. How to properly analyze something what is a sound premise, how one can validate ideas.

We teach facts in schools, we rarely teach good critical thinking skills.

True. If the methodology for detecting and resolving misunderstandings were taught as part of those critical thinking skills, I think we could raise the average IQ of all our students by a significant amount, not to mention the absorption and retention rates for information.

I would agree with you Billy in that I do think everyone intends to gain knowledge but in my mind knowledge is not the transcender of ignorance although it can be a component of it.

One can have great knowledge but still live from a place of ignorance can they not?

There is something else required ... and perhaps it is motivation as Sky mentioned ...

I think there are several components though ... yes, motivation but also ...

Knowledge that things can be different
Awareness that there are other choices to choose
A willingness to entertain alternatives
A mind agile enough to expand beyond its conditioning
An acceptance of new information
An assimilation into one's being prompting a change in attitude and behaviour

I think it all stems from desire....and knowledge is a tool to get there...

That makes sense if you define ignorance as a behavior pattern instead of just a simple lack of knowledge.

Then you get into all the emotional, physical and environmental conditions that could affect the learning process - distrust, fear, indifference, anger, despair, apathy, stress, fatigue, nutrition, illness, current events, political climate, etc., etc., and suddenly you've yanked the entire socio-cultural martix into the fray and you've got 1X10Nth variables to deal with. Far too deep for my shallow mind.