A new form of ignorance is flooding the public areas that goes beyond the bounds of what used to pass for ignorance.Last night I caught a clip on the Daily Show, where they showed a clip from Fox News (Recycling is great). A TV actor (star of the series "Coach") is ranting about how nobody takes responsibility for themselves any more.
Glenn Beck: "Are you saying that you personally won't pay income taxes any more?"
Craig T. Nelson "There are programs that they are asking me to fund that I refuse to fund. We are a capitalistic society. OK I go into business, I don't make it, I go bankrupt. They don't bail me out. I've been on food stamps, on welfare. Anybody help me out? NO.No."
Huffington Post correctly points out that food stamps and welfare are both taxpayer funded assistance. Do you notice the sense of entitlement that this conservative displays, with no sense of obligation?
But I would like to add that bankruptcy protection is itself a way to get undeserved assistance. You borrow money, start a business, when it fails you declare bankruptcy, leaving the losses to others who will never be repaid. Meanwhile you are free to start again, until you do succeed. At which point, if you are at all deluded like Craig T. you can declare "I did it all by myself." And then say "no more paying taxes".
I would like to submit that conservatives who are this deluded, do not understand the realities of social and economic systems. These people probably should not be on TV, especially not the most watched news network in the USA. The economic system itself can be destroyed by spreading ignorance on this unprecedented scale.
Is the Customer Always Right?
The type of ignorance I'm referring to is not the occasional "I forget the name of the capital of Azerbaijan". I am referring to a type of in-your-face ignorance where people who know nothing are emboldened to step forward and state their incorrect opinions with arrogance that you rarely see in even a University professor teaching a class in their pet topic. There is no word yet in our language for this kind of ignorance. For now I will refer to it as viral ignorance.
It is not the educational system that spreads viral ignorance. I think one of the primary breeding areas for it is in retail shopping. The prevalent concept in America is "The Customer is Always Right". The entire retail commercial system is dedicated to enhancing ignorance, to giving stupidity a legitimacy of its own. Millions of people can safely practice spouting ignorance at humble store clerks, who are required to listen meekly to these opinions. Then of course, they go out in the world and become ignorant customers themselves. (Speaking of which, you should see the movie "Clerks" )
Here is a blog with contributions from many people from different countries, of interactions with customers. Some customers are just plain funny, but you can't go too far before coming across an advanced case of viral ignorance.
Check out this one in particular (on the subject of Canadian northern sovereignty, a topic dear to our Prime Minister's heart):
The customer is not always right. Sometimes the customer should know when to just shut up.
A veritable plethora of aphorisms spring to mind ... 'Ignorance is bliss,' for one.
ReplyDeleteI believe it was Socrates who observed that the more we learn, the more we learn how little we know. And there's a Chinese adage that observes that, 'A closed mind is like a closed book: just a block of wood.'
The truly alarming aspect of this is that so many seem to glory in their ignorance. Encouraged, I fear, by those who have a vested interest in perpetuating that ignorance (especially if those minds are closed in favour of their point of view).