On Deliberately Cultivated Ignorance

I make a habit of pointing out things that people would really prefer not to think about, of asking questions that people would really prefer not to ask. When I see conspicuous consumption, I ask an embarrassing question. "Is it moral to live in luxury while children are starving?"

Sometimes people laugh. Sometimes they change the subject. Sometimes they accuse me of asking questions when everyone already knows the answer. "Surely if everyone knows the answer," I reply, "you must know it too." Then I persevere and ask again, "Why is it moral to live in luxury while other human beings are starving?"

The rich are accustomed to living in a bubble of deliberately cultivated ignorance. The suffering of the less fortunate remains unseen and unheard. The homeless are routinely evicted from the nicer neighborhoods. The rich never have to see their suffering. No one has to hear their desperate pleas for help.

The rich surround themselves with sycophants who tell them the distribution of wealth is logical, correct, perhaps even sanctified by God. These sycophants help the rich cultivate the belief that conspicuous consumption is a symbol of achievement, rather than a lapse in morality.

Suppose I earned my money by perfectly honest and noble work. Does that relieve me of the responsibility of helping unfortunate people whose suffering could be relieved by the resources I control?

One of the deliberately cultivated illusions the rich use to conceal their barbarity from themselves is the belief that there's no such thing as a virtuous poor person. Poverty is always the fault of the poor. If a boy is born in a poor family, the rich tell themselves, the parents should have restrained their carnal lust until they could provide a decent life for the boy. If we look hard enough at the life of a poor person, the rich assure themselves, we'll always find a vice somewhere, an error of judgment, a lapse in integrity or morality, some fault that accounts for their poverty. The rich know perfectly well how often their success is due to luck. But they refuse to acknowledge that poverty might also, in some cases, be the result of bad luck.

There's no such thing as the "virtuous poor." There can't possibly be. It would be much too inconvenient if that were a thing. Therefore it must not be. This is the reasoning of those who vigilantly maintain their bubble of deliberately cultivated ignorance.

Advertisers teach us it's a virtue to consume. Every day that message is hammered into us over and over. The opposite message, that conspicuous consumption is glorified murder of starving children, never breaks into the bubble of deliberately cultivated ignorance.

We learned to consume. And we can learn to stop. It won't happen overnight. So long as I'm giving away things and learning to do without things every day, I'm on a path toward asceticism. It's a path I can be proud of. But I can only get on this path after I leave the bubble of deliberately cultivated ignorance. Until then, I will be going around in circles, seeking to glorify myself with a practice that is in fact disgraceful.

Inside the bubble an expensive car or expensive watch is seen as a sign of respectability. Those who have broken out of the bubble see the one who possesses these things as a callous murderer. Those inside the bubble see someone living in a mansion, and think, "He must be very smart." Outside the bubble, we see the owner of the mansion as a fool who can't see the suffering in the world.