Why is ignorance popular despite of unprecedented learnings?

Question

Thanks to all your answers philosophers. Have a great day!

Answer 1

Well, I was recently at a school workshop where a speaker talked about some chimps. I found it quite enlightening. He said that some chimps were put in a cage with bananas. As the chimps went over to the bananas, they were sprayed with a hose. Eventually, when even one chimp would go to the bananas, they would get sprayed. The chimps associated being sprayed with the bananas. They made a logical conclusion. Eventually, they stopped going to the bananas. The scientists replaced one of the chimps. Whan the new chimp went over to the bananas and would get attacked, even though it had no idea why the bananas were "bad." Next, another chimp would be replaced. The first new chimp would attack the newest chimp (the other chimps would be attacking as well) when it would go for the bananas, even though the first new chimp didn't know why the bananas were "bad". Eventually all the chimps were replaced and none of them new about the water, but they would still hold the truth that the bananas were "bad," and they would still attack the one that would go to the bananas. Why? Because every other chimp (everyone else) was doing it.
When you have a society or a mob influencing, threatening or surrounding you, your thoughts and feelings of what is important and necessary tend to align with the society or mob. Maybe we are being brainwashed, or threatened on some level, or maybe we just find it easy to not think because it's easy.
Perhaps we don't appreciate, enough, our ability to think and reason, and we'd rather give that control to someone else.

I would say, though, that on some level, everyone has ignorance. We don't know everything, and cannot claim to. So there are, in fact, some things we are ignorant of. And there are things that we care about, and things we don't care about. The things we don't care about, we might be lazy in making educated judgements and we may act towards them in ignorance.

Answer 2

The majority of the people are just trying to make a living for themselves and their families, and they work very hard. Also, they may never have been taught or had the influence of a parent that went to college to show them the way to achieve an education and to have instilled the joy of curiosity and the importance of a disciplined education in them...and it keeps repeating itself from generation to generation in a very overpopulated world. Also, there is a price on knowledge and you may have to pay an arm and a leg to get an education these days, unless you go to the library and teach yourself! Then...take CLEP tests to earn a degree...it still costs a reasonable amount of money that is out of reach for a lot of people. Capitalism is not a very compassionate or giving way, but the alternatives are not very savory either. So, mediocrity rules.

Answer 3

People are afraid of the things they could know, so they run away and cling to the happiness that they can scrape together. They put feeling good over enlightenment. It's because they become stressed from certain knowledge... of course, that's caused by ignorance. It would be better to be educated and also accepting of "unpleasant" things because of that than to be ignorant and living in fear of these things. I can accept the idea of the world ending someday, but others are afraid of it, or they think that the human race is so high and mighty that it'll just keep going on and on and on...

Answer 4

Why not? Since there isn't really any absolute goal that all humans have, the pursuit of knowledge is open to the individual. And since remaining in ignorance is easier, it might be more often chosen.

Going out of your way to learn takes work. In today's society people seem to always be wanting to sleep/rest and have more of it. This shows that they want less work, more relaxation. So learning just becomes work which contradicts their desires of rest/relaxation

Answer 5

For many reasons:
- Many intelligent people well educated are brain washed or have a close mind to see behind their believes.
- The access to education is not equally spreed around the planet.
- Some governments don't want the society to think or question the authority.
-Many people don't want to learn and are happy to be ignorant. Is sad but is true.
-Good education can be expensive out of the hand of poor people.
-etc.

Peace to you.

Answer 6

It is over-population. There are just too many people to reach. The masses do not have access to the learnings available. Therefore, mumbo jumbo replaces truth and knowledge. A vacuum likes to be filled. And ignorance lives on.

Answer 7

Ignorance shakes the responsibility off one's shoulder. Just a few ones are willing to carry the load of the resposibility knowledge gives them.

Answer 8

All knowledge is superfluous. Knowledge as such is superfluous. And all knowledge creates only an illusion that we know -- we don't know. You can live with a man your whole life, and you can think that you know him -- and you don't know him. You can give birth to a child, and you can think you know him -- and you don't know him.

And whatsoever we think we know is very illusory.

Somebody asks, 'What is water', and you say, 'H2O' -- you are simply playing a game. It is not known what water is, nor what H is nor what O is.

You are just labelling. Then somebody asks what this H is -- this hydrogen -- and you go to the molecules, to the atoms, to the electrons... but you are again giving names. The mystery is not finished -- the mystery is only postponed. And at the last, there is tremendous ignorance. Nobody knows what the electron is.

In the beginning we did not know what the water is -- now we don't know what the electron is, so we have not come to any knowledge. We have played a game of naming things, labelling things, categorising, but life remains a mystery.

Ignorance is so profound and so ultimate that it cannot be destroyed. And once you understand it, you can rest in it. It is so beautiful, it is so relaxing... because then there is nowhere to go.

There is nothing to be known, because nothing can be known. Ignorance is ultimate. It is tremendous and vast.

All that we know is illusory. Somehow we manage the illusion that we know. Somebody introduces you to somebody else, tells them your name, your qualifications, your country, and it is thought that you have been introduced. You remain completely unintroduced, because your name is not you, neither is your country nor is your religion. You are that profound ignorance inside.

But when I use the word ignorance, I don't use it in any negative sense -- I don't mean absence of knowledge. By ignorance I mean something very fundamental, very present, very positive. It is how we are. It is the very nature of god to remain mysterious. It is the very nature of things to remain mysterious. Everything is illusive, and that's why it is so beautiful. If man succeeds in knowing everything one day, there will not be anything left except to commit suicide.

We can go on knowing and knowing and knowing, and we never arrive -- the ignorance remains untouched, undisturbed by it.

To come to an understanding of this ignorance is to become enlightened. Hence the socratic dictum: 'I know only one thing -- that I don't know.' That's what enlightenment is all about. If you can accept your ignorance -- welcome it, cherish it, enjoy, delight in it, because this is how things are: nothing is known, nothing can be known and everything is mysterious your life will have a quality of magic.

Logic will be gone, and your life will be more magical; a charm, a tremendous grace will be there, because now there are no boundaries -- nothing is defined. This undefined is what god is. And I call this ignorance divine.

The very urge to know is an egoistic urge, because by knowledge we want to become powerful. Yes, Bacon is right when he says, 'Knowledge is power.' And our search is really for power. We go via knowledge. We want to know because by knowing we can manipulate.

The word science means knowledge, and the word religion should really mean ignorance. It is the polar opposite.

Science is an effort to know about things, and religion is not any effort to know -- rather, it is an effort to live whatsoever is... to relax into it and to celebrate it.

If one can rest in one's ignorance, there is no problem, no anxiety. The mind by and by disappears. It makes ripples no more.

You must have heard the old proverb: Ignorance is bliss. It has some depth in it. And I always say, 'Blessed are the ignorant, for theirs is the kingdom of god.' And I don't say, 'Theirs will be the kingdom of god'; I say 'Theirs is the kingdom of god.'

So just have a taste of ignorance, and you will have a taste of God. I am not a man of knowledge. In fact I don't know anything -- because nothing can be known; that is not possible. If somebody claims that he knows something, he is claiming the impossible.

I don't know anything. But this not knowing is so blissful, who bothers to know?

So let this surround you more and more. Even your husband is not known to you -- how can a mystery be known? If you live together, you love each other, you share each other's space, but the space is such that it can never be reduced to knowledge. The moment you feel that you know your husband or your child or your friend, your mother, your father, you have reduced them to things. A husband becomes a thing, a wife becomes a thing. Then they are no more persons, their glory is lost -- and the agony begins.

If you can remain in this ignorance of 'How can I know?' then life is very alive, flowing. You are never stuck, and there is always much to explore. In fact there is everything to explore, and every day is a new beginning of a new exploration. You never feel that you have known this man for so long. You are never fed up... you are never bored.

Boredom comes out of knowledge. The fed-up feeling comes out of knowledge. The moment you say that you know this man, now the exploration has stopped. Now you are stuck together. Maybe you are together for some other reasons -- security, finance, society, morality, religion, a thousand and one reasons -- but now the exploration is no more there. And when there is no more exploration there is no more love.
My definition of love is: when you are exploring the other, you are in love.

Whenever you feel that now there is nothing to be explored -- the territory is covered, completely mapped, measured -- that man is finished, that woman is finished! But it is good that we can never know. You only create the illusion of knowing because you have lived with this man for ten years. You have seen him eating, taking his bath, hugging you, talking to you, but these are very superficial things... just peripheral.
Deep inside there is a vast sky, and you have not explored it. Once you start feeling that you are ignorant, the doors open. And then you can go on and on and on. Each individual is an infinity. Each flower is an infinity.

Looking at a flower, Tennyson is reported to have said, 'If I can know this flower -- root and all -- I will know the whole existence then nothing is left.'

Because to know a flower, root and all, means to know the whole existence. The flower is rooted in existence. Its colour is coming from the sun. Its vitality is coming from the earth. It is breathing the air. It has a past -- millions of years... a whole heritage -- and it has a future. It has already thrown its seed around. It may be gone in this form, but it will be there in another form. It has been always there and it will be always there. It is spread all over existence because it is rooted. But to know even a small flower root and all, is not possible.

Even to know a small stone, root and all, is not possible.
Knowledge is impossible. And this realisation -- that knowledge is impossible -- is a radical realisation. Then you turn towards religion. Then there is a conversion, a hundred degree turn. Then you move into another world -- the world of mysteries, the world of magic, the world of love and of the heart. The head tries to know, the heart tries to enjoy. Knowledge creates boredom -- enjoyment never! It is always new and always fresh.

Answer 9

ignorance is the way some people embrace learning. It is like a boy talking back to make himself more "important" in his eyes, so people will be ignorant to feel higher, or fit in.

Answer 10

Militant indifference is easier.