#philosophyminis

The writer Hunter Ash once argued that most people, even the smartest and the best educated, will use what they know not to understand the world, but to win an argument for their tribe. The number of people trying to genuinely understand reality is vanishingly small.

The ancient Greeks had a word for this. They called it amathia, and they argued it would be the downfall of civilisation.

Amathia is usually translated as ‘ignorance,’ but this is not the same as ordinary ignorance. With ordinary ignorance, you can resolve it by giving somebody a book, a documentary, or an experience. But amathia is something darker. Amathia is the active refusal to know. It’s the grade A student who thinks they’re too good for their teacher’s feedback. It’s when somebody refuses to learn how to say your name properly. It’s when an otherwise intelligent person refuses to learn anything that might challenge their already held beliefs.

The Stoic Epictetus argued that amathia is one of the greatest causes of human evil. If somebody walks around with the smug self-conviction that they already know enough, they will stop trying to learn more. If somebody thinks they are perfect, they will stop trying to be better. If you view your beliefs as a position to defend, and not as a hypothesis to challenge, you will use your knowledge and your intelligence as a weapon.

Simple ignorance is not the problem. The problem is when somebody decides, for whatever reason, that they are already right and you are already wrong.