The Virtue of Ignorance

 

Imagine you’re a wannabe actor living in a poverty-stricken, crime-infested Southern city in a state where racism and white supremacy still make the rules. Corruption is so commonplace that no one even notices anymore. There is no hope for education or decent health care or finding a job. Falling down shotgun shacks line the sidewalk-less forgotten neighborhoods and everywhere you look the streets and bridges are falling apart. Even in the traditionally best parts of town, there’s no safe place left to shop, walk, drive, work or live.

Now imagine that, as unlikely as it seems, a casting company is coming to town to make an M. Night Shyamalan film and as an aspiring actor, you are offered $500 a day to learn a half dozen lines and be in the film. Provided you are vaccinated against COVID 19 and are willing to wear a face mask when not shooting. I myself would be doing handstands to get to the nearest vaccination site but not in this city. No, here we prefer to go maskless and refuse to vaccinate. Our faith is in God and science is a Chinese hoax. We prize our ignorance, crow about our rights, shoot anyone who gets in our way and step over our dead. It’s not a pretty sight. It could be worse, I remind myself, I could live in Texas.

The world has changed and I’m not persuaded it’s for the better.

With a handful of exceptions, if left to their own devices and consciences, people will not do the right thing.

With a handful of exceptions, businesses and corporations will choose profit over people every time, no matter the consequences.

With a handful of exceptions, there is not a politician on any level with the most remote sense of integrity or compassion or concern for his constituents or country.

With a handful of exceptions, I didn’t know the people I thought I knew at all. To see their true colors exposed is sickening.

A run of the mill Saturday night in this city brings news of three separate drive by shootings, not in the places you don’t go after dark but in the upscale zip codes of the wealthy and privileged. The front windows of a hospital are are shot out, innocent passengers in nearby vehicles are terrorized, a high speed police chase ensues and three teenagers are dead. No one can say why or what they were thinking but when they are caught, a veritable arsenal of weapons is seized, leaving some in this community to be stunned and others to shrug in resignation. The following week, an office-involved shooting takes another teenage life and though over 2o police units respond, it’s barely reported in the news. We are so accustomed to the violence that it’s hardly on our radar anymore. It would seem we have resigned ourselves to our own ignorance and its consequences.

Not surprisingly, the movie company changes its mind about filming here and decides to move on to a city with a little less gunfire, a little more concern for human life, and a place where ignorance is less of a virtue.

“The real weapons of mass
destruction are the hardening hearts of humanity.”

Leonard Cohen