For nearly thirty years now the Neo-Cons have been in power. They have cultivated ignorance as a desirable trait. They can use it to control the minds of the populace to the point that they can stand up and tell us to "be afraid" and we are. What a traitorous thing for them to say. our leaders should be telling us to be courageous, to face the world with head held high. When I hear fearmongering like that I get angry, I don't rush out to buy duct tape.
Let me see if I get this straight...
You running around claiming Christian fundamentalist theocrats run around plantin bombs in US skyscrapers killing thousands of Americans to wage endless wars to steal oil and trigger the Apacolypse at the behest of some shadowy cabal that runs all the banks and media and yet...
...you think it's the neocons that are spreading fear?
Fundamentalism is just another word for willful ignorance. This concept is the philosophical equivalent of closing your eyes and sticking your fingers in your ears and going "lalalalalalalala, Amen. Damn, that pisses me off. Parents filing lawsuits to get creationism in schools saying "I don't care what the facts are, I want them to learn this." The worst part of willful ignorance is the desire to pass it on to offspring.
Not to be confused with fundametnalist liberalism that uncompromisingly holds fast to its tenets, demanding all others accept their creed without deviance. heresy or compromise without deigning to consider the validity of others views such as--say--a merciful Lawgiver, economic self-reliance, patriotism and perhaps Starbucks coffee really is overpriced ptarmigan urine.
That leads me to Individualism. The idea that your gratification is more important than the very lives of other people. If you do not see the suffering you cause it does not exist. Gated communities were created to keep out the riff-raff but also to keep up the illusion that consuming and excluding are good. Who cares if that new diamond was dug up by a slave? Who cares that 30 animals died for you to have that mink coat? Or even, Who cares if that $3 shirt I just bought at WalMart was made in an Indonesian sweatshop. Our comfortable lives are built on 3rd world peasant labor, there is not one American who does not in some way benefit from this lop-sided system. Maybe that is why they call us traitors for wanting to change that for the better. Some call it liberal guilt, I call it being a human being rather than some opportunistic ape.
Maybe you heard of the old addage: give a man a fish and you can feed him for a day but if you teach a man to fish you can feed him for a lifetime.
What individualism assumes is that it is the responsibility of each man to actually get off his arse and go fishing.
See?
You may have guessed by now that willful ignorance is a constant irritant to me. The blinders that we all put on just to get some kind of joy from the world serve a useful purpose, one cannot bleed for the world all of the time. But the people who never look down to see who they tread upon and who never look back to see the damage in their wake are the ones who make this world a hard place to live. They punish the unfortunate because they see them as being willfully ignorant. Some poor people may be but most simply have no options.
Willful ignorance is when a person has every opportunity to to live a virtuous life. They could be helping others and learning the truth of things but instead they close their eyes and continue consuming this world until there is nothing left. That pisses me off. That is why I am angry.
This is where you should choke yourself for willful ignorance and an absolute failed sense of irony.
