“Kids,” he said, “were dying all over. And every morning you’d wake up and ask, “Where did Charlie go? And the nurses would all say, ‘He went home.’ And we’d say, ‘Oh, that’s great, he went home!’ But we all knew the kids who ‘went home’ were dead. But here’s the thing: the only way to be hopeful was to deny reality.”
Philip Zimbardo, reflecting on his childhood illness
Zimbardo and his fellow patients were willfully blind: denying truths that were too painful, too frightening to confront. It’s something we all do, even when we have grown up. The problem arises when we use the same mechanism to deny uncomfortable truths that cry out for acknowledgement, debate, action, and change. Many, perhaps even most, of the greatest crimes have been committed not in the dark, hidden where no one could see them, but in full view of so many people who simply chose not to look and not to question.
Excerpt from “Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril”, by Margaret Heffernan.
Whether choose to engage in development of public decisions or policy, a social justice issue, environmental issue or any other kind of community issue depends firstly on whether we choose to even make ourselves aware of it. How easy it has become to “distract” ourselves with entertainment, games and living vicariously through our favourite television show. If we don’t allow reality to even be on the radar screen, we will continue to be blissfully ignorant and undisturbed by events we find “unpleasant”. But we are far from innocent. What are the consequences of not knowing about the realities of our world or striving for a better understanding? We have significantly reduced our capacity to adapt, to create any change that may be needed, but also we have reduced our capacity to react to change imposed upon us. Our ignorance also makes us vulnerable to manipulation by others.
And then there is the situation of denying reality as described by Heffernan. We have the opportunity for knowledge, and a responsibility to be informed, but we refuse to take it. She explains, “We can’t notice and know everything: the cognitive limits of our brains simply won’t let us. That means we have to filter or edit what we take in. So what we choose to let through and to leave out is critical. We mostly admit the information that makes us feel great about ourselves, while conveniently filtering whatever unsettles our fragile egos and most vital beliefs. Fear of conflict, fear of change keeps us that way.”
Willful blindness allows us to “disengage” from community and society. We may think being blind makes us safer, but it is only when we confront facts and fears, we achieve real power and unleash our capacity for change.
