Ignorance
I have a friend who is embarking on a grand experiment: to avoid all news in an attempt to reduce anxiety and be happier. My response? That the last thing we need is more Americans who are hopelessly ignorant of what's going on in the world around them. That's not entirely fair to him, and I didn't mean to be so harsh, but the whole enterprise angered me. I didn't even know why at first. Upon further reflection, I realized that I was offended. I actually found it practically immoral.
This is exceedingly odd for me. I am a deep, dark blue social liberal; I try to only make moral judgements about behavior insofar as it impacts others. Yet willful ignorance deeply offends me. How can you be an effective participant in society while remaining largely ignorant of it? Isn't an educated, informed electorate a necessary component of any healthy, functional democracy? It may be an unreachable ideal, and we may fall far short of it at the moment, but that doesn't mean we should just give up. I would actually be less bothered if he chose to withdraw from society completely, but to remain a part of society, yet refuse to engage with it completely, seems fundamentally wrong to me.
But my offense runs deeper. My friend is speaking specifically of news of politics and world affairs, but others are equally content to be ignorant of science, of psychology, of other cultures, etc. Many are quite proud of what they don't know, speaking of "intellectual elites" and speaking the word "science" with derision. You may argue that avoiding the news is not the same as refusing a few inconvenient scientific facts, and you would be right, but it is the same sort of "celebration of ignorance" that I find disturbing.
How can anyone revel in ignorance? How can anyone desire this, much less actively seek it? This is my chief problem with religion: it encourages you to stop asking questions. I am well aware of the psychological benefits of religion, and of its societal benefits, but those benefits pale when they are in service of a delusion. Truth is a virtue. Truth is the highest virtue. And curiosity is a virtue as well. Our experience tells us the universe is comprehensible; we face practical limitations in our observational and computational abilites, but, in principal, nothing is out of bounds. We must keep pressing further. I will always prefer a hard truth to blissful ignorance, or to a comforting delusion.
Truth is a virtue. Is that a spiritual belief? I concede it might be. But, if it is, it is a belief, in part, that we should not be content with spiritual beliefs. And, if I begin embracing paradoxes...well, that starts to sound like religion. And that makes me a little uncomfortable.
Which brings us full circle; I like to be a little uncomfortable. I enjoy uncertainty. I embrace ambiguity. I crave greater understanding, and I will never be satisfied. This is what drives us forward, as individuals, as societies, and as a species.
Ignorance is not bliss; it is only ignorance.