I've been thinking today about the word "ignorance." I guess maybe because I just finished To Kill a Mockingbird.
Embedded in the word is the smaller locution "ignore." In fact, the construction of the word "ignorance" taken at face value would suggest, rather than the above definition, an actual species of refusal to pay attention to something.
When you ignore someone, you intentionally to do not attend to them. There is intention involved:
: to refuse to show that you hear or see (something or someone)
: to do nothing about or in response to (something or someone)
Obviously, the word "ignorance" has taken on the meaning that it has now. The Online Etymology Dictionary has little to add about how this happened.
ignorance (n.) 
c. 1200, from Old French ignorance (12c.), from Latin ignorantia "want of knowledge" (see ignorant).
But I guess my point is less about the origins of the word and rather what it has to teach us now. In an age when technology gives us knowledge and information at our fingertips to the vast (and admittedly overwhelming) extent that it does, we have a responsibility to not ignore knowledge and ignore others. I'm no saint in this aspect. There's so much I've chosen not to know--whether it is an active or passive choice. And of course I'm not saying that we cannot be responsible to know all there is to know.
What I am saying is that I think that the technologically progressive nature of the society in which we lives places on us, as partakers in and citizens of it, a greater responsibility than past generations to be informed and to not be "ignor-ant" of what is going on in the lives, communities, countries and globe around us.
Today, I think ignorance is a choice. Perhaps it has always been to some degree, but I think it's even more of a choice now that it has ever been.
Let us not ignore. Let us be reasonable about the knowledge and the extent to which we pursue it, but let us not ignore.
(Day 27)
ignorance
noun ig·no·rance \ˈig-n(ə-)rən(t)s\
: a lack of knowledge, understanding, or education : the state of being ignorantEmbedded in the word is the smaller locution "ignore." In fact, the construction of the word "ignorance" taken at face value would suggest, rather than the above definition, an actual species of refusal to pay attention to something.
When you ignore someone, you intentionally to do not attend to them. There is intention involved:
ignore
verb ig·nore \ig-ˈnȯr\
: to refuse to show that you hear or see (something or someone)
: to do nothing about or in response to (something or someone)
Obviously, the word "ignorance" has taken on the meaning that it has now. The Online Etymology Dictionary has little to add about how this happened.
But I guess my point is less about the origins of the word and rather what it has to teach us now. In an age when technology gives us knowledge and information at our fingertips to the vast (and admittedly overwhelming) extent that it does, we have a responsibility to not ignore knowledge and ignore others. I'm no saint in this aspect. There's so much I've chosen not to know--whether it is an active or passive choice. And of course I'm not saying that we cannot be responsible to know all there is to know.
What I am saying is that I think that the technologically progressive nature of the society in which we lives places on us, as partakers in and citizens of it, a greater responsibility than past generations to be informed and to not be "ignor-ant" of what is going on in the lives, communities, countries and globe around us.
Today, I think ignorance is a choice. Perhaps it has always been to some degree, but I think it's even more of a choice now that it has ever been.
Let us not ignore. Let us be reasonable about the knowledge and the extent to which we pursue it, but let us not ignore.
(Day 27)
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