Willful Ignorance: The New Lead-Lined Piping

It's been postulated that the fall of the Roman Empire was due, in part, to the mental decline of the people caused by the willful consumption of lead and the resulting long-term lead poisoning.

Their plumbing was usually lead-lined, their drinking and eating utensils were often coated in lead and even their spices contained lead. Long-term exposure to lead leads to a lot of ugly things:

• Abdominal pain and cramping (usually the first sign of a high, toxic dose of lead poison)
• Aggressive behavior
• Anemia
• Constipation
• Difficulty sleeping
• Headaches
• Irritability
• Loss of previous developmental skills (in young children)
• Low appetite and energy
• Reduced sensations

The long-term social and physical complications include:

• Behavior or attention problems
• Failure at school
• Hearing problems
• Kidney damage
• Reduced IQ
• Slowed body growth

In short, the use of lead in the diet isn't recommended unless you want to take a world dominating empire and reduce it to ruins in a really, really short amount of time.

Now, whether it actually WAS the lead or not isn't the point. The point is lead COULD HAVE BEEN the cause of the kind of behaviors, issues and troubles the Romans experienced as their empire crumbled from within and this is where Willful Ignorance comes in. Today, I believe this is what will cause the destruction of the United States (and probably the rest of the world) as we know it. Maybe destruction is too harsh of a word. Perhaps transformation is better, though I don't think it will be a peaceful one.

Willful Ignorance is pretty much what it sounds like: The conscious choice to refuse to learn about or believe in anything that does not comply with religious, political or ideological dogma. It's a choice made by a person to be ignorant. Defining ignorance, it means a lack of knowledge despite the opportunity to learn what could have been taught.

A naive person isn't ignorant. They never had the opportunity to learn. A naive person becomes ignorant by not seizing or taking advantage of the opportunity to learn when it becomes available. A knowledgeable person becomes willfully ignorant when they refuse to believe what is being taught and refuse to find conclusive evidence to support that belief.

So why would someone want to avoid knowledge? Well, denial isn't only a river in Egypt. It's a constant companion with the human race. And denial is often easier to accept than the truth of a thing. Denial can be beneficial, but most of the time it's a roadblock to a full and meaningful life. But it's WHY someone denies something that makes the difference between a simple mental step on the road to acceptance and what I'm talking about here. If someone denies it due to religion, politics or ideology, instead of, for example, a psychological inability to process the information, its willful ignorance.

Willful ignorance goes a step further than denial. Denial usually takes the "avoidance" road - they don't want to discuss it, act like it never happened, refuse to think about it. Willful Ignorance attacks it, actively encourages others to attack or deny it, will seize upon the thinnest shred of fluff and blow it out of proportion in regard to its true relevance to "prove" their point and will become hostile toward those who don't agree with them.

Sounds a lot like lead poisoning, doesn't it? Irritability, lowered IQ, behavior problems...

I wrote about global warming not long ago, which probably exemplifies the issue of willful ignorance the best, but it's not the only place this willful ignorance can be found. It's everywhere. In schools where administrators and school boards try to thrown in pseudoscience and mythology as part of a science curricula. Science class is supposed to teach, in part, logic and critical thinking. Adding garbage to that process handicaps people in their educational processes. I don't mind magical thinking in a class like philosophy, writing, fantasy or art, but it doesn't belong in science classes.

In business, allegedly knowledgeable people engage in undermining the science of climatology strictly to earn a profit. It SEEMS like they're so focused on the next quarterly forecast, they can't see more than three months ahead. They seem utterly blind to the consequences of their businesses practices. (And if you think I'm just talking about the oil companies and global warming, then I'll have to ask what rock you were under when the entire global economy melted down due to the mixing of sub-prime mortgages into investment packages which were sold to investors and investment firms who lost pretty much everything when the housing market collapsed leading to the Great Recession - which is still on-going.)

In politics, ideology has become so entrenched, that the business of running the government is now at a standstill while politicians pose and preen for their supporters. The partisanship is so deep, the United States credit rating was LOWERED mostly due to the inability of the politicians to actually work together. Willful ignorance is making politicians play a high-stakes game of chicken and it's OUR livelihoods at stake - not theirs. (I don't expect any politician will ever miss a meal because they can't afford it or worry about whether they'll have a roof over their heads ever in their entire lives.)

When so many people are so willing to be blinded to what is out there, the ONLY way back is through radical change. Something has to cut through their determination to remain ignorant. It has to undermine their religious, political or ideological prejudices to the degree that they stop defending them and start listening with real interest. But given that man is an irrational creature, this can't be done, in my humble opinion, without violence. The really sad part is that this willful ignorance will most definitely lead to violence. It already has in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Ignorance always leads to violence. And the belligerence of the willfully ignorant, who defend their ignorance angrily and violently, is why I don't think the transition from willfully ignorant to knowledgeable will be a peaceful one.

Like lead-lined pipes may have brought about the fall of the Roman Empire, willful ignorance will bring down civilization as we know it. A lot of people are going to get hurt. The terrifying part is that so many people are so willing to embrace the ignorance, they may win out in the end. I've always thought mankind has the potential to be great. I still do. But I've come to the conclusion, based on this mass embracing and active defense of ignorance, that while mankind has the potential to be great, he doesn't have the strength of will. Ignorance is too easy, and too volatile, to guarantee survival, let alone greatness. It would appear that mankind's potential to willfully embrace ignorance is greater than his willingness to embrace his potential greatness.

Without something that can reach the willfully ignorant and turn them back toward the path to greatness, I don't think mankind will survive long enough to reach his potential. What's really got me down about it is that the Romans didn't know any better than to eat lead despite the constant health issues that arose from it. Today we've seen the consequences of willful ignorance over and over and over again and have not learned enough to see where it will lead. So like the Roman Empire before, I believe we are heading for a collapse brought about by our own willingness to embrace and defend our ignorance.