Concerning Varieties of Ignorance

As children we are excused from many mistakes because of our ignorance. And often later in life we would like to claim the same immunity—which brings us again before this question: When is ignorance excusable? This would be easier to answer if all ignorance were of the same kind—but it is not. Sometimes ignorance is honest and unavoidable. But there are some, such as those whom Peter wrote, who “…willingly are ignorant”7—who harbor the willful ignorance that prefers to believe what it finds to be convenient to believe. There is also malicious ignorance, ignorance that prefers to believe sensational rumor rather than honest fact, ignorance that chooses to credit the worst about others rather than take the time to discover the truth. Some ignorance is genuinely naïve, but there is also a “smart” and sophisticated ignorance—the ignorance that pretends to have a new answer for all the old questions, and that cynically sets aside the answers that time and experience have proved. But there are some things in life for which there are no “new” answers. There are also varieties and degrees of educated ignorance, whereby, knowing full well the consequences, we disregard many laws: economic laws, moral laws, the laws of health, and other laws, for which we always pay, and from which much learning does not save us. There is also the ignorance of laziness and indifference; the ignorance of him who is self-satisfied, who ignores the wisdom of the past or is indifferent to the advancing knowledge of his own generation and yet who feels qualified to criticize what he doesn’t know; the ignorance of him who doesn’t want his life to be disturbed by greater light, more truth, new discovery; the ignorance of him who believes only what he wants to believe, because it requires an uncomfortable adjustment to believe anything else, even if it happens to be true. How long shall ignorance be justified? The question is difficult to answer, but this much can be said: While we may not be condemned for what we do not and cannot know, we surely shall be accountable for what we have willfully disregarded or were too lazy or too indifferent to discover.