Week 21 - "There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

This week's publication may be controversial to some, but I hope it promotes healthy discussion about the topic. Please comment and/or message me if you agree or disagree about anything I've said :)

Ignorance has always been a complicated subject for me. For the longest time, I took pride in my awareness and knowledge. I did everything I could to be aware of what was going on around me as well as what and why I was doing things for. In my mind, this would only help me make better decisions that not only reflected my true intentions but also benefited those around me.

And I don’t necessarily think there's anything wrong with that. I truly believe that knowledge is one of the primary objectives of our existence. We exist to cultivate and discover new things as a means of progressing forward as a species. What exactly we are progressing towards is a separate discussion for another time.

But during this pursuit of knowledge, I’ve somehow held the belief that ignorance was an all-or-nothing choice. I can either deny every opportunity to learn and stay blissfully ignorant or say yes to everything I might not know. At least, that’s what I tell myself. 

But recently, I’ve come across an idea that had somehow never occurred to me: Selective Ignorance

To some, including my past self, selective ignorance sounds ridiculous. How can someone choose what to be ignorant about? Doesn’t it say something about someone’s character if they willfully ignore something important? 

Well, maybe not.

When I say I’m trying to be selectively ignorant, I mean that I want to be intentional about what I choose to learn. This doesn’t mean I’m ignoring what’s important; if anything, it’s the opposite. 

We live in an information-dense world where there’s information about every topic and person imaginable. And as awesome as that is, it’s also extremely overwhelming. Because there is so much information readily available for me to access, I’ve always felt like it was my duty to stay informed and up to date on everything. This didn’t just include traditional topics like politics and sports but also every one of my interests. 

As long as it is relevant to my interests or anything I think is important, I need to know. But how do I decide what I think is important? As much as I want to say it’s completely driven by my values and morals, I can’t. Unfortunately, for me and most of the people I know, many of the things we consider important have been ingrained in us through others. 

A great example is politics. This may be a controversial opinion, but I strongly feel like when it comes to politics, the only reason I feel like I need to know what’s going on is because other people have told me I do. Don’t get me wrong, when it comes to something like voting, I strongly believe in making informative decisions. But if you say the only way to make an informed vote is to know everything that goes on with a candidate throughout their campaign, we’d have a lot of voters making “uninformed” votes. 

For most, 30 minutes of intentional research before voting is more than enough to make an informed decision about who to vote for. Yet most of us feel like the only way to make an informed decision is to check the “News” column of a major newspaper daily. 

We’ve been conditioned to think things like politics deserve so much of our time that it’s ignorant to not always know the details of what’s going on. To be fair, there are valid reasons for this mindset. It’s challenging to rely solely on headlines when fake news is such a large and very real problem. But there has to be some middle ground. 

“Ignorant may be bliss, but it is also practical” - Timothy Ferriss

I refuse to believe that the solution is to never be ignorant. There has to be a way to choose what it is we’re going to pay less attention to in our lives. And in my opinion, that choice should never be anything we are truly interested in. There’s way too much going on in the world to sacrifice your passions for someone else’s, so the next time you seek out information for any reason, think about why you’re doing so. Ask yourself if you can reasonably be ignorant about said topic and if doing so would help.

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