{"id":1996,"date":"2020-04-10T00:01:34","date_gmt":"2020-04-10T04:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=1996"},"modified":"2020-04-08T17:45:57","modified_gmt":"2020-04-08T21:45:57","slug":"a-to-z-challenge-2020-i-is-for-ignorant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=1996","title":{"rendered":"A to Z Challenge 2020: I is for Ignorant"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I is for Ignorant<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou are so dumb.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAre you even listening to me? What an ignoramus!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat an ignorant fool you are. Do you even know how to think?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t believe how stupid he is; totally ignorant.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe facts are right there; how can they be so ignorant?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Have you ever heard those statements or ones like them? Were you ever the one that said them? I have to admit, I\u2019ve been on both ends of having those words used. I\u2019ve even told stories (folktales) about characters who appear to be ignorant. Isn\u2019t the lion ignorant in the Aesop fable of the \u201cLion and the Mouse\u201d? He laughs at the thought of a puny mouse thinking it might save him one day. And then there\u2019s the Jack tale I tell, \u201cFoolish Jack\u201d where Jack does everything his mother says in order to bring home wages that he\u2019s been paid for a days work; of course, he doesn\u2019t think about each situation, he just follows what his mother last told him, to disastrous results, until the end where it does work out for him. Was he ignorant?\u00a0 How stupid was it to pour a bucket of milk in your pants pocket to bring it home?<\/span><\/p>\n

Lately, I\u2019ve come to look at things from a different perspective on using the term \u2018ignorant\u2019 and similar terminology after listening to an interview by storyteller Simon Brooks of another noted storyteller Eshu Bumpus.<\/span><\/p>\n

The dictionary definition of ignorant is: <\/span>lacking knowledge or awareness in general; <\/span>uneducated<\/span> or unsophisticated.<\/span><\/p>\n

Okay, is someone who has the ability to look up facts that explain or verify some information that they lack knowledge of and chooses not to look them up ignorant, negligent, apathetic, or just stubborn and closed-minded? Here, the emphasis is on choice. They have the ability to learn and not be uninformed but choose to be set in their own thoughts and opinions.<\/span><\/p>\n

What about Jack? Is he truly ignorant and have no understanding of the world around him? Is he lazy and just doesn\u2019t want to think?\u00a0 Or could he be on the spectrum of autism and that\u2019s the way he functions, yet has a great understanding of other things?<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you get where I\u2019m going? Calling someone or some group ignorant is a surface term that has no true meaning. One can be ignorant of something because they haven\u2019t been exposed to it; because they choose not to buy into the facts that underlie it; because they don\u2019t have the background knowledge to understand it; because they are mentally challenged due to natural or environmental conditions. I\u2019m sure there are many other examples that might explain why you would want to refer to someone as ignorant. But without the background information to help define that person\u2019s behaviors and thought processes, it is unfair to label them ignorant…IMHO. In fact, in most of those cases, the term ignorant is just plain wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

I do feel sorry for the people that are so stuck in their ways and choose to be ignorant by refusing to look at things from objective points of view. Unfortunately, that is intentionally or unintentionally how they choose to be. They are probably the ones that are more likely to label someone else as ignorant.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I resolve now that when I tell a story like \u201cFoolish Jack\u201d I don\u2019t end the story by calling him \u2018foolish\u2019 or \u2018stupid\u2019 or \u2018ignorant\u2019, but by saying, \u201cThat\u2019s just the way he was.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s what I got from the interview of Eshu Bumpus. There are a people in the listening audience that might identify with those kinds of characters in my stories because they see themselves as doing some of the same things as Jack, and are helped by realizing that it is okay to be the who they are and not the label that they might be called. Those people don\u2019t necessarily have a choice and I\u2019m glad I am helping them. I\u2019d be ignorant to do it any other way.<\/span>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I is for Ignorant \u201cYou are so dumb.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cAre you even listening to me? What an ignoramus!\u201d \u201cWhat an ignorant fool you are. Do you even know how to think?\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t believe how stupid he is; totally ignorant.\u201d \u201cThe … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,10,9,5,7],"tags":[70,67,223],"class_list":["post-1996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-to-z-blog-challenge-2020","category-education","category-personal-stories","category-storytelling-tips","category-story-writing","tag-a-to-z-blog-challenge","tag-harvey-heilbrun","tag-ignorance"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1996"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1998,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996\/revisions\/1998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}