Cynics, please move on, there is nothing to read here for you.
Not long ago, well, I use not long ago to cover up my laziness or my deteriorating memory. I can't quite remember which of the two.
Not long ago, had you asked me to name some basic human rights, I'd have rattled off most of the U.S. Constitution and added a couple of other rights to impress you with my open mindedness and my steel trap mind, which is getting a bit worn out at the edges.
It is nearly impossible to say when it all started to change. Was it the day I realized that famously dark and morose French writer Albert Camus was one of the greatest comedians of his generation? Or was it when the explanation occurred to me for why an unnamed world power began using torture?
Oh, you want to hear that one, sure. It began when an Ivy League trained lawyer who had passed his Latin language class because the teacher and the student's dad, well...
He passed, graduated, and went to work for the government. Then one day in a meeting he heard a Latin phrase that obviously translated as "have me the corpse", so he brought back a corpse.
Memory, where art thou?
Or when we and the world found out that the right to privacy had never been more than a right of the privileged class and even they had pretty much lost it?
Or was it when we read that a big reason for "18-wheelers full of cash" paid by unwilling German citizens to their public broadcasting companies was this: someone had enshrined an "educational value to the populace" in the law that created the broadcasters.
The sanctity of your house, your body and everything you ever cherished gone, there was only one fundamental human right left, the right to ignorance.
The Right to Ignorance is much more than the right to not know or not learn what others want you to. It is not a passive right, the Right to Shrug Off, if you will. The Right to Ignorance is an active right, one that goes public, unabashed, unashamed, a bit like Martin Luther in front of the cardinals who put him on public trial. Luther, known for highly colorful language, said something like "Here I stand, you motherf*****s, what 'you gonna do 'bout it!"
I concede he may not have said "what you gonna do 'bout it", because he was not from New Jersey, I'm pretty sure he was Italian, though.*
Yes, Luther was right, and that clears him of ignorance, but he was Italian.
Getting ignorance right to the point where people's jaws drop and all logic drains out of them in the face of your behavior or speech is a long journey, it needs education, not any education but the sort where "less is more".
The charm of the right to ignorance lies in the fact that taking it away from us makes the world a more boring place. Taking away your privacy makes the world more interesting to those who do the taking. Reading your ex girlfriends emails as part of your job must have some allure...otherwise it wouldn't be done. Listening in to other people's very personal conversations on the telephone should do the same thing.
Taking away our ignorance, au contraire, means less tabloid fodder, less schadenfreude. Ignorance is an easy way to make money, too.
Not enshrined in any constitution, not declared as a human right by the United Nations, not protected in any law [actually, well, ahm...], ignorance draws strength from not being a right everybody wants.
So, do not dismiss ignorance just because that's what your culture wants you to do.
Gee, am I tired. Just read some of the other posts on this blog, and you will see it is tough to get there, but I have almost achieved a satisfactory level of ignorance myself.
And I will fight for my inalienable right to ignorance.
* Look it up on Wikipedia. If Wikipedia doesn't confirm it, well, they are lying. **
** How many asterisks can we string together? Anyway, we hope you understood the Luther is Italian quip is a joke.
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