Willful Ignorance

The tribally inclined audience … is contemptuous of outside fact-checking, no matter how assiduous, but endlessly gullible toward information shared on the inside. Consequently, it is an easy target.

David Roberts

When people voluntarily choose to severely limit their sources of information they are choosing to willfully blind themselves. Because people are easily drawn to slanderous and one-sided information sources, people with limited information soon start to believe crazy, wrong things. When challenged with more accurate information, they can quickly become defensive, angry, and belligerent.

Truth, being the “knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:24) includes all reality. It is not limited to anyone’s narrow, biased, or partisan position. Truth is revealed through evidence, and the more evidence one has, the more detailed, precise, and accurate is one’s understanding of the truth.

Truth requires effort

Truth can make people uncomfortable. It requires compassion, broad-mindedness, and strict honesty. Since we all fall short of this standard, we all require continual repentance. This takes effort. It requires personal humility and regular self-examination.

For many people it is easier to take shortcuts, make compromises, and abdicate their responsibilities to others. They abandon the pursuit of truth for the sake of personal comfort. Unfortunately, as people become more ignorant, they often become even more dogmatic about their opinions.

Our blindness grows out of the small, daily decisions that we make, which embed us more snugly inside our affirming thoughts and values. And what’s most frightening about this process is that as we see less and less, we feel more comfort and greater certainty. We think we see more — even as the landscape shrinks.

Margaret Heffernan

The Utah Mormon cocoon

In the Utah Mormon cocoon I grew up in, it was a tradition for my neighbors to offload their political beliefs and understandings to local, white, Republican men. This was easy to do because these Republican men presented a “Mormon leader” tone and appearance. They acted as if Mormonism and Republicanism were the same thing, and the people passively accepted the lie. The charade was made even easier when the Republican candidate was also a Mormon Stake President.

Growing up in such a climate, it is not surprising that many Utah Saints have not bothered to really examine what has happened to the Republican party in the age of Trump. They simply continue to blindly vote Republican. Willful ignorance is their comfort zone and they are reluctant to leave it.

And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell.

2 Nephi 28:21

Walk in the light

When we join the Church of Jesus Christ we are expected to open our eyes and walk in the light of ever-increasing knowledge. In fact, the pursuit of ever greater knowledge and wisdom IS the path to the Celestial Kingdom. Latter-day Saints cannot afford to limit their sources of information, give up their critical thinking abilities, and surrender their moral judgement to corrupt, biased, partisans.

This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,
Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:

Ephesians 4:17-18

Evil is plainly visible

So I say to my brother and sister Saints – Wake up! Open your eyes! The evil in the White House, on Wall Street, in the Capitol Building, is plainly visible. The corrupt character and selfish intent of people like Donald Trump, Charles Koch, and Mitch McConnell are revealed clearly every time they speak. We must stop ignoring the obvious.

We make ourselves powerless when we choose not to know. But we give ourselves hope when we insist on looking. … As all wisdom does, seeing starts with simple questions: What could I know, should I know, that I don’t know? Just what am I missing here?

Margaret Heffernan

The price of ignorance is high

It may seem to be more comfortable, for now, to remain willfully, blissfully, ignorant. But the price you will eventually pay is very high. According to the scriptures, willful ignorance could well cost you your exaltation.

It is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance.

Doctrine and Covenants 131:6

And wo unto the deaf that will not hear; for they shall perish.
Wo unto the blind that will not see; for they shall perish also.

2 Nephi 9:31-32

Sources: David Roberts, “Donald Trump and the rise of tribal epistemology,”Vox, May 19, 2017.
Catherine Rampell, “Americans – especially but not exclusively Trump voters – believe crazy, wrong things,” The Washington Post, December 28, 2016.
Maria Popova, “Why We Ignore the Obvious: The Psychology of Willful Blindness,” BrainPickings.
Margaret Heffernan, Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril, Walker Books, March 2011.