NationStates Jolt Archive

Are the masses (general populace) responsable for their own ignorance or is the blame to be put on manipulative media or external sources?

OR

do you think that the people arent ignorant at all......

Ignorant people aren’t responsible for anything. That’s what makes them ignorant. :D

Seriously though, it’s mostly their own fault, but the media sure as hell doesn’t help much either. And then of course there’s the parents. The parents play a huge role as to how ignorant their children can become.

Ignorant people aren’t responsible for anything. That’s what makes them ignorant. :D

Seriously though, it’s mostly their own fault, but the media sure as hell doesn’t help much either. And then of course there’s the parents. The parents play a huge role as to how ignorant their children can become.

lol :D

to play devil's advocate: if a person is made so ignorant by outside sources that they cannot precieve the "truth", can it be their fault?

Kinda like the idea that, did people who didn't believe in God before the Bible was written go to Hell?

"The people, especially when moderately instructed, are the only safe, because the only honest, depositaries of the public rights, and should therefore be introduced into the administration of them in every function to which they are sufficient; they will err sometimes and accidentally, but never designedly, and with a systematic and persevering purpose of overthrowing the free principles of the government." --Thomas Jefferson

I think that people are ignorant, not perhaps because they wish to be, but because there is indeed so much going on that it's hard to stay well-informed on it all. This is where the government is failing us. Instead of informing, they increase secrecy so the only outlet the average person has is the media which, in a captialist country, is going to run with what sells.

lol :D

to play devil's advocate: if a person is made so ignorant by outside sources that they cannot precieve the "truth", can it be their fault?
Difficult question. That all depends. There are a lot of variables and there is in no way that I can list them all down. But upbringing is a huge factor in the early years. Afterwards but they need to start being able to claim more responsibility.
did people who didn't believe in God before the Bible was written go to Hell?

Yes, just change the spelling from Hell to Hel and talk to some Norsemen.

Have you been in a public school lately?

Depends on what you mean by "ignorant". In my experience, most people are quite intelligent in at least one field. That may be something as complex as nuclear engineering, or as seemingly trivial as knowing everything about Melissa Joan Hart.

Of course, most people would say that the latter kind of knowledge is pointless and a sign of the degrading state of mankind/coming Apocalypse/reverse Darwinism/whatever. The problem with this line of analysis is that in order to making the claim that people today are a bunch of "marching morons", to use survivalist lingo, you have to ignore a hell of a lot of history. It's only been in the past 70 years or so that most people got any kind of generalized knowledge beyond their field of expertise at all. Before that, most voters were either illiterate or had read only one book: The Bible. To be honest, if our country can survive 150 years of that, it ought to be able to survive a generation more fascinated with the sex lives of celebrities than congressional procedural requirements.

Perhaps a look at some famous examples can answer that question.

Jessical Simpson (remember chicken of the sea?)
Anna Nicole Smith (nuff said)
Dan Quayle (potatoe, among a host of other things)
Mariah Carey "see those poor, starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean, i would love to be that skinny, but not with all those flies and death and death and stuff"

David Dinkins, New York City mayor "I haven't commited a crime, what I did was fail to comply with the law." == answering accusations that he failed to pay his taxes.

Brooke Shields, "Smoking kills. If you are killed, you have lost a very important part of your life." == during an interview to become spokesperson for an anti-smoking campaign.

Winston Bennett "I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of your body." == , University of Kentucky basketball Foward.

Lawrence Summers, "I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpoluted." == chief economist of the world bank, explaning why we should export toxic easte to Third World countries (as if that's a great reason to ship toxic waste :headbang: )

Lawrence Summers, "I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpoluted." == chief economist of the world bank, explaning why we should export toxic easte to Third World countries (as if that's a great reason to ship toxic waste :headbang: )
Hrm, well, that can make sense in a neoclassical economics model. So he's not so much stupid as has a different model of reality to you.

That depends. If there's something innate that makes people want to learn new things, then yes. If not, then no.