Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> Brian:
>
> What I found most interesting was the absolute shock and horror these
> respectable burghers displayed seeing the piles of starved corpses.
> These people were not pretending, they were genuinely horrified. What
> shocked me, however, was how could those people live their lives without
> knowing what their government was doing literally in their backyards?
>[clip]
>
> The answer which I found is that every government, especially a fascist
> one, depends on ***learned ignorance*** -a selective inattention of the
> general public to certain facts that may shatter their complacency. If
> the burghers of Bergen Belsen realized that their government was
> committing genocide in their backyard, they would have to either a)
> endorse it, and thus take the responsibility for it or b) oppose it, and
[clip]
I won't disagree with this but I think I can broaden, even dull, the force of "learned ignorance." In a book published around 30 years ago, _Muscle and Blood_, which I have around the house someplace but can't put my hands on, the author tells of a silver-mining town in Montana. The silver was mixed with lead, and there was so much lead dust in the air that townspeople who had never been near the mines were developing blue lines in their teeth from all the lead they were absorbing. And they were just as resistant to knowledge of what was killing them as the neighbors of Belsen were to the doings of that camp or as americans like brian are resistant to the knowledge of what the u.s. is doing to so many people, at home and around the world.
In the current LBO Doug suggest that a "will to ignorance suggests a troubled conscience." Probably in some cases, but it's a pretty damn superficial explanation: at best it names what needs to be explained rather than explaining anything. It certainly can't explain the "will to ignorance" of those people who were themselves dying from the lead in the air of their town.
Carrol
>
> Now fast forward it to 2003 and tell me what it takes for the most
> citizens of this county to work, play, watch teeve, shop etc, while a
> fourth of the country population live in abject poverty, while their
> government is killing people all around the world, and while Americans
> are among one of the most hated people around the world. My answer is,
> predictably, learned ignorance that makes the people to believe that
> they live in, using your phrase "fucking paradise."
>
> Wojtek
>
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