If you're not feeling "hopeless and broken," you're not paying attention.
One of the common threads in our present crisis, perhaps the most important one, is ignorance.
Hatred demands ignorance, a view of the world narrowly shaped by powerful interests. Public education is anathema to the right. It's much easier to manipulate the masses if you keep them ignorant and prey on their emotions.
But the "powerful" are educated. Isn't that a contradiction?
No, because it's about preserving power and privilege. It's possible for the powerful and the privileged to hate, despite their education. They're still ignorant when it comes to viewing the world through a wider aperture, one where they aren't the center of the universe. That's another form of ignorance, but it isn't a barrier to achieving wealth and power. In many ways, it's self-reinforcing. They believe they "earned" their positions of power and privilege, and they work hard to protect that blind spot.
It's no mystery why we haven't confronted the challenges of climate change, inequality, species loss, over-development. It's not in the interests of the powerful and the privileged to do so. Instead, they obfuscate, deny, demonize and use every tool at their disposal to promote ignorance and confusion.
The state where hatred thrives, and where it can be used as a tool.
For a long time, we weren't confronting "the limits to growth." It was easy to mask or ignore the dynamics of enforced ignorance. Today, we're bumping up against those limits. Indeed, we're in overshoot. The privileged and the powerful who hate, the ones who want to preserve their caste at the expense of the rest of us, must now work openly, and harder. And we're witnessing it.
One of our local Republican legislators, Representative Randy Fine likes to refer to public schools as "government schools," where students are presumably "indoctrinated" into a leftwing liberal agenda.
Florida wants to outlaw the used of "climate change" in government. Enforced ignorance.
Banning abortion at six weeks when most women don't even know they're pregnant. Relying on ignorance.
The list goes on.
I don't know how to stop it, but I know it won't go away unless we talk about it.
Ignorance is both their sword and their shield, and we have to fight it.
Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:16 Friday, 10 May 2024