Everybody is familiar with the term ignorant. Hell, I'm sure a couple of us have used the term to refer to people who we'd gladly take on in a general knowledge quiz. They are the dumbos, ignoramuses and fools who we encounter on a daily basis. Whatever you'd like to call them, we all love and at times, hate an ignorant imbecile. However, I was forced to question the meaning of ignorance when I had a rather benign conversation with a friend this week. We were happily reminiscing about our childhoods and the ample things in which we participated. It was lovely. I genuinely got a rush reliving some of those picture-perfect moments with my mate until we got to the subject of fairy tales. Now, unlike other children, I was not a massive fan of fairy tales. Yes I read 'Cinderella' and 'Aladdin' and a whole load of others but in my case, my mother wanted to expose my brother and I to other literature forms. Hence the reason why she read us a whole load of Chinese and Japanese folk tales translated into English. I absolutely grew to love 'Little Peachling' as I could not believe that a child could be delivered in a peach and 'The Seven Chinese Brothers' was also a favourite as my brother's marvelled at the powers of all the seven brothers. So much so that we prayed to God that we could have a couple of our own. I read widely as a child and although there are semblances of me enjoying the traditional Western fairy tales, I took more of a liking to Asian folk tales.
Which, brings me to my story. My friend started to mention her favourite fairy tales and noticed that I offered my take on the subject rather hesitantly. She confronted me about this and I simply told her that I could not, for example, name the seven dwarfs from 'Snow White' because I simply did not take a massive liking to the story. She appeared rather flabbergasted and said something along the lines of, 'but everybody liked 'Snow White. I mean the fact that you don't know the names of the seven dwarfs (which I'm apparently supposed to spell in capital letters but I feel as though they'll forgive me) is quite ignorant.' Is it though? Is my not knowing the names of those characters true ignorance? It got me thinking; who are we to tell someone that they're ignorant? Because surely ignorance is not knowing about something of which we know. That, in my opinion, could quite plainly be construed as someone not knowing something you do. In the same way that a 10-year old would not be able to tell you the ins and outs of calculus because they have not been exposed to it, could we then put it down to a lack of exposure? Some would disagree with this assertion and state that there are certain things about which people MUST know. However, I think you could argue relativity here. All knowledge, regardless of how important it may be to YOU, is relative. Someone living in a very remote area with very little exposure to different media forms would not be able to know as much about society as someone who lives in a world where the former is readily available.
If that is the case then, why is it that Americans know very little about everything that is not American? They are, after all and whether the world likes it or not, the number one super power and will be for some time. Why is it that so many of their citizens, for example, think that Africa is a country and presume that London is a state right next to France? It brings me back to my initial argument and the title of this post: some call it ignorance while others call it a preference for certain information. Americans prefer to know about what they think is important: themselves. In the very same way that South Africans, as some Africans would aver, prefer to know solely about South Africa and perhaps southern Africa while the rest of the continent is completely ignored.
If my argument holds true then this is a bit of a bummer because I love the term ignorant and I enjoy calling people ignoramuses so it wouldn't be too grand not to use both terms. But it could, if you think about it, be ignorant to call someone else ignorant because you're essentially being ignorant about what they know and should know. Now how's that for a double pun or irony-within-irony? Might be a stretch but you have to applaud me for attempting to provoke some thought in the world.
Au revoir :)
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