“I’d Rather Not Know”: The Art of Willful Ignorance
Artwork by Xander Wise
It’s a bit jarring to be scrolling on TikTok and seeing GRWM for work one minute and the next a snippet of starving children and the world being on the brink of nuclear war. It’s strange, to say the least, to see people post a black square in solidarity with the BLM movement while commenting on an Instagram reel about which race is the least attractive. It’s uncanny, frankly, to watch influencers preach about allyship while working with brands and companies that actively enable and encourage hateful propaganda, with some even funding genocide.
It’s bizarre, lastly, to notice all of this and willfully ignore it each and every time.
We all do it.
Another raging climate disaster? Scroll.
Mass school shootings and deportations in the US, while Trump authorizes strikes in the Middle East again? Typical Tuesday.
Polarized presidential elections, mainly discussing which rights of women should be taken away? Been there, done that.
This isn’t apathy; it’s learned behavior. A coping mechanism, dressed as convenience. Psychologists call it willful ignorance, which refers to:
“a complex psychological and social phenomenon characterized by the deliberate avoidance of relevant and readily available information (...) motivated by the desire to avoid cognitive dissonance—the mental discomfort experienced when one's beliefs are contradicted by new information” (Youvan, 2024, 3).
It’s that uncomfortable feeling when you see something wrong, witness the brutality, the cruelty, and yet choose to keep scrolling.
Pointing out the ugliness of humanity isn’t socially acceptable, especially when it threatens the collective ignorance society maintains to uphold dominant narratives. That is also probably why holding an opinion against all this information is deemed “controversial”, and uncomfortable. Be silent and scroll like the rest, rather than stopping and thinking for a second.
But here’s the irony, when this same discomfort is fictionalized, we love it.
Think about it: from Katniss Everdeen to Luke Skywalker— mostly everyone agrees that their defiance was inspiring, needed, and heroic amidst the evil lurking in their worlds. Yet, when you see that same evil in your own society, many turn a blind eye.
They claim no difference will be made with their voice. That they are a nobody, with no power, and with too many responsibilities to even think to care. They avoid the truth and the news as it’s uncomfortable, and nothing can be done anyways. No change will come regardless.
So, why even fight? Why even think twice about it? You owe no one nothing.
Turning back to Michel Foucault, modern society relies on disciplinary power within institutions to train individual behaviour, habits, and their ability to think. Essentially, rendering one to be a docile body.
Social media encourages this docility. It doesn’t just distract; it trains us to consume content passively, perform solidarity selectively, and suppress outrage in favor of aesthetics.
By choosing not to know something, we preserve the illusion of normalcy and become desensitized to the horror around us. When you watch the tragedies befalling the world without a care, you’re engaging in a power system designed to keep you docile. The less you know, then the less you act, then the less you think,…until eventually you stop reacting at all.
Maybe it’s the youth in me, or simply plain naivety and denial, but I fight to see the good in humanity. If I feel discomforted with that bizarre mindless scrolling, then I can’t be the only one.
My goal isn’t to make you feel guilty for doing nothing.
It’s not to shame you for feeling numb.
But rather to ask you: who benefits when we continue like this?
Your willful ignorance towards the injustices in society benefits the powerful by keeping people divided, distracted, and disengaged.
So, the least that you can do is choose not to look away. Choose to know. Choose to think.
Because, ignorance is bliss, but at what cost?
xoxo,
Khushi Kumari
Sources:
Michel Foucault, “Docile Bodies”, in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (Vintage Books 1995), pp. 135-169.
Youvan, Douglas C. Confronting Willful Ignorance: Cognitive Biases, Social Media Echo Chambers, and the "Conspiracy Theory" Phenomenon. 14 Apr. 2024. Preprint,https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379816130.
