A to Z Challenge 2020: I is for Ignorant

I is for Ignorant

“You are so dumb.” 

“Are you even listening to me? What an ignoramus!”

“What an ignorant fool you are. Do you even know how to think?”

“I can’t believe how stupid he is; totally ignorant.”

“The facts are right there; how can they be so ignorant?”

Have you ever heard those statements or ones like them? Were you ever the one that said them? I have to admit, I’ve been on both ends of having those words used. I’ve even told stories (folktales) about characters who appear to be ignorant. Isn’t the lion ignorant in the Aesop fable of the “Lion and the Mouse”? He laughs at the thought of a puny mouse thinking it might save him one day. And then there’s the Jack tale I tell, “Foolish Jack” where Jack does everything his mother says in order to bring home wages that he’s been paid for a days work; of course, he doesn’t think about each situation, he just follows what his mother last told him, to disastrous results, until the end where it does work out for him. Was he ignorant?  How stupid was it to pour a bucket of milk in your pants pocket to bring it home?

Lately, I’ve come to look at things from a different perspective on using the term ‘ignorant’ and similar terminology after listening to an interview by storyteller Simon Brooks of another noted storyteller Eshu Bumpus.

The dictionary definition of ignorant is: lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated.

Okay, is someone who has the ability to look up facts that explain or verify some information that they lack knowledge of and chooses not to look them up ignorant, negligent, apathetic, or just stubborn and closed-minded? Here, the emphasis is on choice. They have the ability to learn and not be uninformed but choose to be set in their own thoughts and opinions.

What about Jack? Is he truly ignorant and have no understanding of the world around him? Is he lazy and just doesn’t want to think?  Or could he be on the spectrum of autism and that’s the way he functions, yet has a great understanding of other things?

Do you get where I’m going? Calling someone or some group ignorant is a surface term that has no true meaning. One can be ignorant of something because they haven’t been exposed to it; because they choose not to buy into the facts that underlie it; because they don’t have the background knowledge to understand it; because they are mentally challenged due to natural or environmental conditions. I’m sure there are many other examples that might explain why you would want to refer to someone as ignorant. But without the background information to help define that person’s behaviors and thought processes, it is unfair to label them ignorant…IMHO. In fact, in most of those cases, the term ignorant is just plain wrong.

I do feel sorry for the people that are so stuck in their ways and choose to be ignorant by refusing to look at things from objective points of view. Unfortunately, that is intentionally or unintentionally how they choose to be. They are probably the ones that are more likely to label someone else as ignorant.

So I resolve now that when I tell a story like “Foolish Jack” I don’t end the story by calling him ‘foolish’ or ‘stupid’ or ‘ignorant’, but by saying, “That’s just the way he was.” 

And that’s what I got from the interview of Eshu Bumpus. There are a people in the listening audience that might identify with those kinds of characters in my stories because they see themselves as doing some of the same things as Jack, and are helped by realizing that it is okay to be the who they are and not the label that they might be called. Those people don’t necessarily have a choice and I’m glad I am helping them. I’d be ignorant to do it any other way.