Sanctioned Stupidity is the New American Religion

The fall of the (willfully) ignorant empire

Sanctioned Stupidity is the New American Religion (created by author)

I’ve been wrestling with these questions lately: What is ignorance? Has it become the silent epidemic of our modern times?

The traditional definition seems deceptively simple: the absence or “deprivation” of knowledge. Like a blind spot while driving, this absence often remains invisible to those affected by it — a form of blindness that’s rarely passive. You don’t know what you’re missing until someone points it out — or you’ve crashed into the wall.

And it usually comes in three shapes:

1. Not knowing something.
2. Not wanting to know something.
3. Not wanting others to know something.

This isn’t new. Ignorance, as well as shaping the ignorant, has been part of humanity since forever.

In the past, people struggled with ignorance simply because information was hard to come by. Important knowledge was often locked away in handwritten documents, hidden by those in power who didn’t want it shared, like within the Catholic Church, to root out and punish heresy throughout Europe and the Americas. Today, we face the opposite problem — there’s too much information everywhere. It’s like trying to drink from a…