Opinion

Ignorance isn't very blissful

Alex Wukman
Opinion Columnist

The other night someone said something incredibly idiotic, while discussing bad musicians; a girl said she didn't know Ted Nugent because she was too young. Now, to use your age as an excuse for not knowing something as trivial as identifying Ted Nugent as the singer of "Cat Scratch Fever," may make sense on a superficial level, but in my opinion is entirely ignorant.

Sadly enough, this attitude, which can only be described as intellectual laziness is just too common amongst too many people. It's nothing but a cop out. By taking this approach to the extreme, people dodge the responsibility of having to know anything that happened before they were born or wasn't taught in school.

However, we must not confuse youthful underexposure with choosing to excuse one's own ignorance based upon age. While both of these things start out by not knowing something because it occurs before birth, the biggest difference is the attitude taken when presented with the information.

The youthful-underexposure perspective manifests itself in an attitude that suggests "I don't know about this, so I'm going to learn about it." However, when presented with the same situation, people who excuse their ignorance take the "I don't care to learn about that because it happened before I was born" approach.

One of many flaws inherent in this second viewpoint is that it hinges on the phenomenon of cultural osmosis -- the miraculous feat of learning things from the environment. This may happen with some things like the techniques for using drugs, which are picked up from society. However, knowledge today must be pursued with the energy and dedication of Benzedrine addict looking for a fix.

Due to the geometric increases in the information available to the average individual and the First World's unsupervised globalization, those who adopt a stance of excused ignorance will inevitably be rendered obsolete.

Already it seems that for people, regardless of age, to make sense out of all the raw information available to everyone, they must have a repository of knowledge that is staggering. It's only going to get more complicated as the world gets more inter-related. Today it is al-Jazeera reporters getting kicked out of the NYSE because the network aired a tape that the U.S. government didn't agree with; tomorrow it may be something subtler. By choosing to remain ignorant, regardless of how trivial it may seem, we set ourselves up to get the metaphorical wool pulled over our eyes.

Wukman, a junior English major, can be reached at alex_wukman@hotmail.com.