So I’m going to ramble a bit here because I’m getting my thoughts out. I’m going to start by saying I don’t currently know or believe I know I have what the solution is, but I do hope that we find it eventually, and maybe it’s already out there and I’m just ignorant of it.
But I’m taking issue with this take on the subject because it’s turning people into Good and Smart vs Dumb and Bad.
> ‘—is making the choice to be someone dumb enough to fall for that’
That’s… that’s just a self contradictory sentence. If you’re too dumb or illiterate or, as I prefer to call it, *inexperienced* in a subject to not understand the consequences of an action, you don’t actually have a choice in regards to how you treat it.
If you’ve never been taught that berries in the wild can be poisonous, and you come across a bush of deadly nightshade (which are surprisingly large and juicy and sweet) the choice you are given on whether you want to try the berries is not “Risk death for it,” it’s “Am I hungry?”
If you’ve been taught from birth that all berries are deadly poisonous to you, and someone offers you a strawberry shortcake, you will fear and loathe them for trying to harm you.
And this way of treating other humans, even adults, is just wildly misconstruing the way that we develop. It’s a strangely popular assumption that there’s just some Age (usually 18) where children cross the line and become Adults, and are magically given all the same information and experience you had growing up, are now considered Fully Matured, and are now just choosing to ignore it. Every time an Adult makes a mistake, it’s because they made the choice to make the mistake, rather than because they were ignorant of the consequences.
Because that’s the thing, is that ignorance is not a choice. Someone does not choose to be raised in a cult, children do not choose to be born in families that spout endless Pro War anti Other Countries rhetoric at them, and if that’s all they know that’s all they know.
There is no fundamental line between the ignorance of a child and the ignorance of an adult.
If a child is not taught to think critically, they will assume that their worldview and ability to perceive it are just as correct as the people around them, and perhaps even more correct. This is not changed once they become an adult, nor does it become more of a choice to remain ignorant.
What’s the solution? I’m not entirely sure yet, which is why I continue to write this out and look for more thoughts from other people and pit my thoughts against myself too.
I think it has something to do with more freedom of information, and more emphasis on compassion and ability to reach out to others and teach, especially to children, the ability to read and compare honestly their own beliefs against someone else’s ideals.
The problem with Fox News isn’t it’s inherent wrongness in assessing the situation or the news, it’s the fact that it reinforces and teaches the idea that “All other media is Always Wrong and you should be afraid of reading it lest you turn to the wrong path and are damned for it.” It’s because it is a part of a self-sustaining system of self-taught ignorance that teaches you to fear the unknown and fear learning about it. The people who are watching it never had a real choice in the matter because they were raised—either in a family, a church, or an online group—where information on how to think critically was restricted and banned, and now this is all they know, and even the idea of trying to analyze another form of media will actually create a feeling of mortal terror in their minds, because they’ve been taught it will spiritually/mentally/physically kill them.
