Ignorance ain't Bliss

Image Courtesy: Tim Mossholder, Unsplash.com

“Living is easy with eyes closed.”

John Lennon

I am not referring to everyday stupidities that we make but the unconscious choice of living in the dark. The unconscious mind comprises mental processes that are inaccessible to consciousness but that influence judgments, feelings or behavior. Whether you believe it or not, our feelings, motives and decisions are actually powerfully influenced by our past experiences, and stored in the unconscious. Hence, Lennon’s quote is relatable, since its deeply disconcerting to acknowledge disturbing but significant information from the past. So what we don't remember can't hurt us or the “Ignorance is bliss” syndrome is what keeps us going.

According to a Psychology Today article, there are 3 types of ignorance; ordinary, willful and higher:

Ordinary ignorance refers to things that we don’t know but are motivated to discover.

Higher ignorance is lofty in scope and hard to achieve – it is a reverence for the unknown-for mystery – or what may be unknowable.

In contrast to ordinary and higher ignorance, willful ignorance occurs when we know the truth but choose to ignore it, or we refuse to abandon false beliefs. According to Urban Dictionary, willful ignorance is, “the practice or act of intentional and blatant avoidance, disregard or disagreement with facts, empirical evidence and well-founded arguments because they oppose or contradict your own existing personal beliefs.”

We often surround ourselves with people who think like us and share our values. This allows us to feel safe. It’s a familiar feeling and we prefer the familiar to the unfamiliar. Research says that our brains our wired not only to willfully blind ourselves to evidences that challenge our beliefs, but to perform cognitive acrobatics to rationalize away the contradictions. Power, money, identity, social acceptance contribute to this willful ignorance/blindness.

Cognitive psychologist, Albert Bandura, argues “People are highly driven to do things that build self-worth; you can’t transgress and think of yourself as bad. So people transform harmful practices into worthy ones, coming up with social justification, distancing themselves with euphemisms and numbers, ignoring the long-term consequences of their actions.”

We spin a narrative that makes us feel good about ourselves, while conveniently filtering whatever unsettles us. So we strive to ignore or reinterpret evidence that lends support to us. Suppose you believed that you failed to deliver a project on time because the brief was obscure and ambiguous. You believe this because you didn’t realize that you failed at the task, while others did quite well. If you had this information, you would realize that you failed at the project because you didn’t do your preparation well or you are not very good at the topic or you didn’t manage your time well. If you continue to believe that the task was hard, obscure and ambiguous, you are severely challenged in your capacity for rational calculation, or the perpetrator

of willful ignorance.

In its defense, willful ignorance has a use. It helps maintain harmony. For example, when driving out, you maybe unyielding in your views and would insist that you know the best way to reach a particular location. Your co-passenger, who is your spouse or son or mother, knows that that’s not true but convince themselves for the sake of maintaining peace. Challenging our ideas by others or oneself, feel threatening. And so we strive to reduce the pain, either by ignoring the evidence that proves we are wrong, or by reinterpreting evidence to support us. Everyone is biased in favor of themselves. These blind spots turn out to have a physical foundation in the brain. Heffernan quotes neurologist Robert Burton, who studies the biological basis of bias: "Neural networks don’t give you a direct route from, say, a flash of light straight to your consciousness. There are all kinds of committees that vote along the way, whether that flash of light is going to go straight to your consciousness or not. And if there are enough ‘yes’ votes, then yes you can see it. If there aren’t, you could miss it."

But here’s the thing: What does your brain like? What gets the “yes” vote? It likes the stuff it already recognizes. It likes what is familiar. So you will see the familiar stuff right away. The other stuff may take longer, or it may never impinge on your consciousness. You just won’t see it.

The good news is that you can pull yourself out of your willful ignorance with a dash of probing or with contradictory information. It might not be too difficult to convince a habitual junk-eater that healthy eating is better than munching on fries, chips and copious amounts of cola.

But there is a more sinister side to ignorance...