He’s entertaining. My thought is that maybe he’s trying to be contrary for the sake of being contrary. I have some sympathy with that approach. Why should we all agree? Consensus can be a dreadfully boring state of affairs.
Rory Stewart is heralding the advantages of ignorance. Even saying that sounds mildly provocative. It’s like saying; I want to be a sensible commentator but I’m going to throw a seemingly nonsensical proposition at you.
Who is Mr Stewart? He once was an English politician. He might claim to still be one. He certainly has speaking and writing abilities that make him interesting in that role. Brexit and all the shenanigans in the Conservative Party pushed him to the margins. Outside of that narrow band of madness he’s quite mainstream.
The square jawed expression and Trump-like hands of the publicity shot must have been the photographer’s first concept[1]. The title of the radio series is a good one. From one series of long histories, I’m sure he can make many long histories. History can be as long as anyone would like to make it. For most of it, humans have been profoundly ignorant about the world and its ways.
I get the notion that the starting point for discovery of new knowledge is ignorance. It’s going too far to say that ignorance can sometimes be valuable, and knowledge harmful. Call me old-fashioned but one of our greatest human achievements is education. It’s a social call to arms. Let’s raise the life opportunities for most people by passing on knowledge.
Every succeeding generation passes on knowledge. We stand on the shoulders of giants[2]. The process that forms the words on the screen in front of me only exists because of generations of development and learning. Onward we go. Well, there was that period of the so-called “dark ages” when humanity seemed to go backwards. And with modern youth there’s the fear of the coming zombie apocalypse whereby we return to a miserable ignorance.
What this says to me is that we take for granted a daily situation that is terribly fragile. Remove the underpinning of accumulated knowledge and back we go.
I say; there’s more than one kind of ignorance. I can think of 4-types without much stress.
There’s that which we all have by nature of not being able to answer the big questions. Why are we here? What’s it all for? How did everything come into being?
There’s that which is unknowing ignorance. Where we believe we know but subsequently its discovered that what we know was wrong. On going discovery.
There’s that encapsulated in the saying about choosing not to see. It’s deliberate ignorance. When we pretend or cannot face the implications of reality.
There’s that which is part of deception. Again, it’s deliberate ignorance or to encourage ignorance. This time it’s an intentional strategy to mislead, misrepresent or do malice.
I’ll listen and learn.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00199xy
[2] https://discover.hsp.org/Record/dc-9792/Description#tabnav
John Vincent 