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Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Why People Remain Ignorant

I'd like to start this week's blog by asking you a few questions: Why are so many people unemployed? Why are so many people unhappy with their lives? Why don't more people accomplish more with their lives? Why do most people unnecessarily limit their lives to only a small fraction of what they could have?

The answer is the same for all the questions. It's because most people are, as general rule, so uniformly ignorant. It seems that people have built-in resistance to knowledge. And in my opinion there are two main reasons people why people don't want to keep themselves well informed:

First, people don't seem to understand how profitable knowledge can be to them in every way; how it can enlarge their horizons, give them more zest, charm and interest to their lives; and how it can improve their incomes and standards of living.

Second, they live in fear that they might learn something that would upset some of their pet beliefs. They would much rather close their eyes and cling to their superstitions and prejudices than run the risk of having to admit they might have been wrong. The easiest way to spot the person with a small, closed mind is by his or her refusal to ever admit he or she was wrong about something.

I've never been able to understand this. What's wrong with being wrong? The only thing that's wrong with it is to cling to it regardless of the evidence.

The person who has never admitted to others that he or she has been wrong about something, or refuses to admit it to himself or herself, is sick. No one can go through life without being wrong about hundreds of things. Because of the constantly changing world we live in, there is probably not a human being alive on earth who is not wrong about 60 percent or more of what he or she believes in.

Reading and learning the thoughts of the great minds past and present; keeping an open mind to all information; actively pursuing knowledge as the answer to success in all areas of our lives, this is the mark of the person who, during his or her lifetime, has a chance to reach fulfillment, to really succeed as a person.

This type of a person will also tend to have a better sense of humor, be more agreeable, more forgiving, and more open minded.

People must understand that knowledge can set them free; that it is good, not bad; that we should embrace it, not be suspicious of it. What most people call living is only an appetizer, while the real life, like a great feast, goes unnoticed and unsatisfied before them.

Unless you're smarter today than you were yesterday, you've got a problem. And if you learn only from experience, or from that which comes to you as a part of daily life with no other effort on your part, you're missing out, and you have no one to blame but yourself.

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