Charles Dickens recognized the significant danger ignorance poses to our world in A Christmas Carol (1843). In the last moments that Scrooge spends with the Ghost of Christmas Present, he notices something odd–“‘a foot or a claw'”–protruding from beneath the hem of the spirit’s robe. Scrooge asks about it, and the Ghost reveals what the old man has seen a hint of:
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
When Scrooge asks, “‘Spirit! Are they yours?'” the Ghost replies,
“They are Man’s. . . . And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware of this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it! . . . Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”
Reviewing images from 6 January 2021’s attempted overthrow of the U.S. government, I see a couple of Black faces–both male. I see many more white female faces. But of course the vast majority of faces are those of white males, most looking very faux MMA or Duck Dynasty: “Big and dull-featured” men.
Altogether, the hot mess of faces that poured through the streets of DC and invaded the Capitol made up a lava flow of IGNORANCE.
I have no doubt that many of those domestic terrorists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, 6 January 2021, are smart in their way, perhaps even articulate in attempting to defend their beliefs and actions (although their actions on that day are, I believe, indefensible even though our Tiamat has pardoned those charged). But I also have no doubt that, to a man, their ignorance, like that of their figurehead leader, is absolute and devouring.
Absent an education about the world, absent knowledge about that world and the self, absent an awareness of the self and the great streams of life within and beyond, the gaping maw of aggressive, malignant ignorance exhibits a taste for little other than animal sensations. Even as animals ourselves, however, humans have incredible capacities for imagination, empathy, sympathy, sensitivity, and love. Ignorance is neither interested in nor capable of these. It is the worst-case scenario of self-centeredness, arrogance, and narcissism.
One dangerous effect of ignorance is instability. The state of being ignorant is one of being ungrounded, unmoored. No matter how substantial the physicality of ignorant men or women or other, the instability resulting from their ignorance leaves them adrift from truth, reality, discernment, and humanity, causing them to be blown around by any wind that reaches them, to be washed this way or that by any tide or flood or pulled under by any insidious riptide.
When 1/6 attackers attempt to defend their actions by saying they just got caught up in the moment, what they’re really telling us that they admit to a destabilizing ignorance that allowed them to be swept away in the chaos manipulated by their supreme leader. For him and them, ignorance has become a state of being, like the air they breathe, and whether this ignorance is individual or corporate, it is unable to know or recognize itself.
“Lord, save us! We are perishing!”
(Matthew 8:25)
