I love the term, "invincible ignorance".
I think it should be pronounced as Conan the Barbarian
might say it: "inwincible ignorance".
Invincible ignorance is ignorance beyond repair, almost.
(Yes, there is a vincible ignorance, too, medievally speaking.)
When it comes to matters of ethics,
many of us are invincibly ignorant.
That is to say, we think that our way of understanding
what is good is the only way to be good.
Why do we do that?
We do that because nothing is simple, and we wish it were.
Is killing another person always wrong?
Is there a right way to rear children?
Can stealing food ever be justified?
Is divorce always a bad thing?
Is infidelity ever a good thing?
Can a person be too rich?
Is health care a privilege or a right?
Is it OK to lie sometimes?
Is it always right to tell the awful truth?
There are no universal codes of ethics.
King David, in the Old Testament, and Abraham,
and many Mormons, think that polygamy is all right.
We don't know what Jesus thought: he never even married.
The Pope thinks that celibacy is a good thing,
and that birth control is a bad thing, but most Catholics
get married and most practice birth control.
Getting out of town is almost always a startling lesson
in how people in other places, other times in history,
and on other places on earth do things differently.
Oddly enough, almost every culture deals with
moral ambiguity by affirming moral absolutes:
their own morals, absolutely! We ignore the ambiguity
by insisting that unless you do as we do, you are wrong!
And why do we do that? Because we don't want
to paralyze ourselves with constant debate about what to do.
We make rules, laws, affirm long practice, and write
constitutions to settle the arguments about what is right.
And when we change our minds about what is right,
we write new laws and constitutional amendments.
At least half of all Americans believe that to be American
is to be what they themselves are: right-wing Christians.
That our Constitution and laws explicitly prohibit a state religion
is completely beyond the point (to them). They cannot imagine
being a moral, loyal American unless you are what they are:
usually, White, Anglo-Saxon early immigrants from Europe
of a right-wing, fundamentalist religious persuasion.
It is of no consequence what the Constitution says,
what Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin said,
whether their neighbors are Jewish or Islamic or of no
religious belief at all. They assume their ethics are the only
possible way to be moral, or to be American.
No facts, no mountain of evidence to the contrary,
will dissuade them from picking their own belly button lint
and declaring it to be the best pillow-stuffing material, ever!
Morals have always been ambiguous.
Humans, in both small and very large communities,
have always had to debate what is good and bad,
and specified for themselves what to permit, and to deny.
There has never been any other way of doing it,
but it is also true that pretending one's own way
is the only sensible way, eases the mind from having to think.
Right now, politically and culturally,
a lot of people are choosing to be invincibly ignorant.
No, I guess that has to be, "vincibly" ignorant.
I think it should be pronounced as Conan the Barbarian
might say it: "inwincible ignorance".
Invincible ignorance is ignorance beyond repair, almost.
(Yes, there is a vincible ignorance, too, medievally speaking.)
When it comes to matters of ethics,
many of us are invincibly ignorant.
That is to say, we think that our way of understanding
what is good is the only way to be good.
Why do we do that?
We do that because nothing is simple, and we wish it were.
Is killing another person always wrong?
Is there a right way to rear children?
Can stealing food ever be justified?
Is divorce always a bad thing?
Is infidelity ever a good thing?
Can a person be too rich?
Is health care a privilege or a right?
Is it OK to lie sometimes?
Is it always right to tell the awful truth?
There are no universal codes of ethics.
King David, in the Old Testament, and Abraham,
and many Mormons, think that polygamy is all right.
We don't know what Jesus thought: he never even married.
The Pope thinks that celibacy is a good thing,
and that birth control is a bad thing, but most Catholics
get married and most practice birth control.
Getting out of town is almost always a startling lesson
in how people in other places, other times in history,
and on other places on earth do things differently.
Oddly enough, almost every culture deals with
moral ambiguity by affirming moral absolutes:
their own morals, absolutely! We ignore the ambiguity
by insisting that unless you do as we do, you are wrong!
And why do we do that? Because we don't want
to paralyze ourselves with constant debate about what to do.
We make rules, laws, affirm long practice, and write
constitutions to settle the arguments about what is right.
And when we change our minds about what is right,
we write new laws and constitutional amendments.
At least half of all Americans believe that to be American
is to be what they themselves are: right-wing Christians.
That our Constitution and laws explicitly prohibit a state religion
is completely beyond the point (to them). They cannot imagine
being a moral, loyal American unless you are what they are:
usually, White, Anglo-Saxon early immigrants from Europe
of a right-wing, fundamentalist religious persuasion.
It is of no consequence what the Constitution says,
what Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin said,
whether their neighbors are Jewish or Islamic or of no
religious belief at all. They assume their ethics are the only
possible way to be moral, or to be American.
No facts, no mountain of evidence to the contrary,
will dissuade them from picking their own belly button lint
and declaring it to be the best pillow-stuffing material, ever!
Morals have always been ambiguous.
Humans, in both small and very large communities,
have always had to debate what is good and bad,
and specified for themselves what to permit, and to deny.
There has never been any other way of doing it,
but it is also true that pretending one's own way
is the only sensible way, eases the mind from having to think.
Right now, politically and culturally,
a lot of people are choosing to be invincibly ignorant.
No, I guess that has to be, "vincibly" ignorant.
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