Friday, 26 May 2017

Ignorance is a right. Loving it is a sin.

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'Tabula rasa' according to Christian Empiricist John Locke suggests that all humans are born as 'Blank Slates' which would later be informed by Experience through the use of their senses. In other words, we were all born ignorant, empty, stupid and prone to idiocy. Our default setting at birth was ignorance.
Nobody should have to apologize for being ignorant. No one should have to hide in shame for processing external information about the world improperly and obtusely. Unlike your digestive and reproductive organs, you were not wired with an inbuilt encyclopedia. In other words, be comfortable in your natural mental inadequacies.
One of the characteristics of nature is change. Everything is perpetually in flux. Everything is in motion. Everything is in transition. It is a universal law of nature and of physics. The Law of Change. The Law of Motion. Constant.
In reality, in the grander scheme of things, nothing is inert. Everything is in motion. Yes, everything is moving. You may think you are static when taking that nap in your bedroom, but relative to the planet Earth and other planets you are actually rotating around the star (Sun) at the speed 30 kilometers per second or 67,000 miles per hour. In effect, while you lie asleep you are speeding around the sun faster than a jumbo jet!
Moreover, even as you are in a state of rest, every atom in your body, every sound wave/light wave travelling through your body are never at rest.
Hence, in your physical state your motion and attendant change is nonnegotiable. It is determined by the physics beyond your control. This is why you age, grow wrinkles on your face and start losing appetite after a while. This is not optional.
Unfortunately, your natural mental state (tabula rasa) isn't subject to the same natural transitions. You don't automatically grow to know Roman Numerals and set of natural numbers 1,2,3,4,5... the same way you know your breathe. You don't suddenly grow the ability to write ABC the same way you grow your first milk teeth. Physical states and progress are fixed by the extant laws of physics. Mental states are not. Rather, they are determined by the WILL OF AGENCY!.
Thus, you can be 50 years of age according to biophysics and be a toddler in mental capacity. Having the appearance but lacking the capacity to deal like a 50 year old. This is what happens when a generation leaves their mental states at the mercy of biology and physics.
Loving your ignorance doesn't mean you actually want to be ignorant. Rather that you are indifferent and nonchalant towards a deliberate and willful pursuit of knowledge. You think that somehow you'd know it if you'd need it. Not true.
There are times when I've glossed over a piece of information without paying it much mind only to regret it later. The same information I blithely ignored was badly needed later but was nowhere to be found in my mental archive. I had taken it for granted.
And herein lies the real danger. The more we form the habit of ignoring what we consider irrelevant knowledge, the more we reduce our attention-span to digest even more knowledge. That is, we slowly and gradually become impatient to consume more pieces of information.
Our minds become lazier at processing difficult data. We'd therefore opt for comics, jokes and gossips instead because rather than task the mind, they entertain it.

You love ignorance not because you hate knowledge, but because the information you pursue is not such that enrich your mental state so that it is at par with your physical state.

Written by Olakunle Allison
www.facebook.com/barr.olakunleallison

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