The Blind, The Naïve, and The Willfully Ignorant

The Blind, The Naïve, and The Willfully Ignorant

 

There is a potentially fatal flaw in the reasoning skills of most people. It’s called the Normalcy Bias. When something is too far outside of what is considered “normal” it is ignored. That’s a great automatic filter if what is being ignored is trivial or just flat wrong, but it can be deadly when there is an actual threat. The perfect example would be those who live on the slopes of an active volcano. From a distance, it’s easy to think those people are nuts. From their perspective though, the mountain just rumbles from time to time, but has never hurt anyone in their lifetime. Their normalcy bias prevents them from leaving even when the volcano erupts until it is too late.

The Blind: For some, this normalcy bias creates a sort of blindness. An example of that is the car driver who doesn’t see the motorcyclist. Even good car drivers who are usually very safe and alert will run over a motorcyclist in a second if they only look for other cars, because in their mind, no car on the road equals safe and safe equals go. So when they pull out into the oncoming traffic of the motorcyclist they always say they didn’t see him. The motorcycle was there. It was clearly visible. Their normalcy bias simply didn’t allow them to see it because they were looking for a car.

The Naïve: Some people just don’t know any better to start with. It’s one thing to try to always think the best of others. That is a noble sentiment. Expecting that common criminals will not harm you just because you yourself mean them no harm though is naïve. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Predators almost always go after the defenseless weaker looking target first. Whether the naïve think they are being high-minded or brave won’t matter a bit to their attacker.

The willfully ignorant: Some are stuck in denial out of fear of what they don’t want to accept. Some reject the truth in favor of their own hubris. They never learned that pride comes before a fall. Of course, some are just plain dumb as a stump too, but so many people consciously chose not to acknowledge danger even when they are presented with solid evidence. They are like the ostrich who sticks his head in the sand pretending the danger isn’t there. Willful ignorance doesn’t make a problem disappear. It just makes you totally unprepared to deal with it when it can no longer be ignored.

It is a sad, but there are people out there who just never will be convinced, understand the importance of, or care enough to act on important information even when it means their very survival. You can’t expect everyone to see things your way, but when that person is a close friend or family member and the issue is of vital importance, it’s just heart breaking to think of a loved one paying the price down the road for their refusal to heed today’s warnings.

That happened to me recently when a friend who generally avoids politics like the plague sent me a link to a website that monitors the US debt in real time and shows how much each person owes. Their email simply said “this is scary”. I replied advising them of just what those runaway near uncountable numbers mean and how important it is that they prepare themselves. I explained what happened during the Great Depression and told them to buy food and to be prepared to defend themselves. My friend glibly retorted that they were “not worried about food and bullets” and were “pretty much anti-gun”. They said, “When the end times come, they come, and it just means that looking to the next life, the one that lasts, is even more important.” I just shuddered when I thought about the prospects of his two little children paying the price for his ability to ignore the realities of this life to live in the next before he gets there.

Why did he bother emailing me about it in the first place? He has done this kind of thing before. Someone asks him a question he isn’t sure about or shows him something that alarms him and he asks me what I think, because he knows I pay attention to important things. Then his eyes glaze over when I try to explain, or like this time, he just totally ignores the warning like the level of seriousness tripped some kind of circuit breaker for his ability to cope.

Please folks. Be aware of more than what is normal. Question why. Think critically and prepare yourselves for what is coming. Jesus did go to prepare a place for us and he is coming back again to take us there, but an awful lot of nastiness is going to hit a gigantic fan before we shuffle off this mortal coil. People who are your friends and family are trying to help you see what is coming. Please prepare.