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THE THREE KINDS OF IGNORANCE · The Karen Kenney Show

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Karen Kenney: It's the Karen Kenney show. Hey, you guys!
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Welcome to the Karen Kenney Show. I'm just diving straight
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into this sucker. You want to know why? Number one, couple of
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reasons. I'm a little tired. I'm recording this at like 7o'clock
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at night, which I like never ever do, and my sweetie and I
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got to stop getting our yummy vegan dinner snacks to go. You
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don't want me doing this while I'm hangry. Double A men hands,
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if you know that you literally transform into a totally
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different human being. It's like you're you're taken over by the
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hangry the hangry monsters. Okay, so here we are. You know
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what? I I don't know what I'm gonna call this one. Maybe it's
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like the three types of ignorance. Now there could be a
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lot of others, but just for the sake of this episode, we're
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gonna dive into the three types of of ignorance, and I think
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this is wicked important for a lot of different reasons, one
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especially because the state of the world right now is so
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insane, and people just people just refuse to like read a read
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a book or two or to educate themselves. Obviously, not
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everybody, but I think at a time when we're coming up on like
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time just to vote, like November, and to educate
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ourselves and to learn some fucking facts and stuff. Okay,
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so let's just dive into this and beyond it. I also just think,
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look, every episode that I do is also for me and my ears. These
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are reminders to me as well to to take a look at kind of the
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human condition and the ways that we often do things, and the
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patterns and the habits that we fall into, and just basically
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the blind spots to our own bullshit. You guys have heard me
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say 1000 times, like we have to own both our brilliance, double
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amen hands for that, but and our bullshit, right? And we often
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have a little bit of a teeny tiny blind spot, if you don't
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know or believe that you have a blind spot, ask the people
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closest to you because I am sure that they will inform you.
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Hopefully, in a kind way. Okay, well, this all started with
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Dolly, good old Dolly Parton. You know, God bless her. We lost
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her recently, as everybody knows. And I was reading a story
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about her, and I've been thinking about this ever since.
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So back in the day, she had a place called the Dixie Stampede
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Dinner Show. It was a dinner theater show, one of the very
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many business you know ventures that she had. And after 2017, in
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the criticism, in the wake of the criticism of the
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Charlottesville white supremacist rally, I think
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that's where her her show her place is. You know, people were
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getting upset because it was called the Dixie Stampede, and
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so she decided to rename the attraction, and she says, like
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she did an interview with Billboard. I'm just reading this
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here, and she said Patton addressed that controversy,
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saying that she was guilty of innocent ignorance, and that she
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would never dream of hurting anybody on purpose, and I love
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this. Let's talk about this. We've all experienced, I'm sure.
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If we didn't do it ourselves when we were wee little ones,
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we've heard your own children, you know, strangers, kids in a
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checkout aisle or at a store, or your nieces, your nephews,
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somebody. You've heard a child blurt out something that is
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maybe mean or unkind or what might be considered rude.
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They're very inquisitive. They point at somebody and they say,
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"Why is that person? and then fill in the blank, or "Why don't
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you? and then fill in the blank, or "What happened to your? and
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fill in the blank. Right? We know little kids are notorious
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for just blurting out things before they learn that that is
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not maybe considered kind or polite, or that's rude or that's
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hurtful or whatever. And there is this thing as of innocent
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ignorance, which is like an unintentional, right? An
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unintentional lack of knowledge, and it just usually stems from
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being young, right? People's age. It stems from a lack of
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experience and a lack of exposure. A lot of times, rather
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than a choice, right? An active adult choice, like to avoid the
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truth or to avoid reality. A lot of times, it's very passive.
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It's not done out of meanness. It's done out of you know again
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lack of experience, lack of age, lack of exposure. And when Dolly
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talks about this, she says, and I'm quoting her here. She says,
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you know, there's such a thing as innocent ignorance, and so
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many of us are guilty of that. But as soon as you realize it's
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a problem. You should fix it. This is a key part to my next
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thing, right? As soon as you realize it's a problem, or
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there's a problem, or maybe you've stepped in it, or you put
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your foot in your fucking mouth, or you said something you
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shouldn't have, or whatever, right? Like we of all, I'm sure,
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said something, blurted something out, did something
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when we shouldn't have, and it wasn't to be mean or harmful,
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even if that's how it came across. But it doesn't matter if
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the harm was done. You know, we have to kind of own it, even
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though, like Dolly, we may never dream of intentionally trying to
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hurt somebody. Sometimes we're clumsy. That is just the human
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condition, and it's on us that once we realize that we've made
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a mistake, that we're guilty of doing doing it, that it's become
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a problem with somebody, that we should try to fix it. You know,
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and it's it's temporary, and it's there's a usually a pure
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intent behind the question. We again going back to little kids,
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we see them; they're really asking something out of
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curiosity or confusion, or they've never seen something
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before, heard something before. They don't understand why
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somebody looks different or sounds different or whatever it
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is. And there's not, there's no malice attached to it. You know,
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there's no desire to cause deliberate harm. And I'm sure,
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like I said, it's usually, hopefully, fingers crossed. You
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know, it's forgivable, or it's something that resolves itself
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naturally over time as the parents educates them, or you
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educate yourself as you gain more life experience, as you
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expose yourself. And this is why reading books is like so
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important. As you get to, like you know, I think music does
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this too. My sweetie and I were just talking about this: music,
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dance, movies, books, the arts-you know what they do is
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they show us the lived experience of other people. We
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can literally read about and insert ourselves or imagine
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ourselves in somebody else's shoes, and this totally expands
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our worldview. It expands our education. It expands our point
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of view, right? We're able to see what it might be like to to
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be in another person's shoes. It gives us direct exposure when
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you travel to new places. We think we know all kinds of
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things until our ass is actually in the grass, right there on the
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ground. You know what I mean? So it's really important because
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sometimes we may not know something because again, there's
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a lack of resources. Maybe we didn't know. Another reasons why
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I champion libraries because I think we have so much access to
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incredible resources, and that we can, you know, help us to,
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you know, grow out of. It gives us the opportunity to grow out
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of that innocent ignorance, right? And like I said,
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sometimes people just don't know better. But once you know
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better, once you know better, it's on you, it's on us, it's on
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each of us to do better. Okay, so that's innocent ignorance,
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which sometimes happen. Then we come into what I think we are
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currently in a lot of the times, which is what's called willful
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ignorance, right? Willful ignorance is when we are
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consciously making a choice. When a human being is being
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deliberately ignorant, they are avoiding, avoiding, or
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rejecting, like ping, ping, ping with their Wonder Woman
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bracelets, just ping, ping, ping, ricochet, rabbiting away,
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like facts, relevant facts, things that matter. They're not
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looking for for for more knowledge. They're not looking
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for evidence. They don't want anything that is going to cause
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them cognitive dissonance. They don't want to accept or look at
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or read or hear or whatever anything that's going to cause
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them discomfort because of what view or belief or story or
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whatever they are currently holding. They don't want their
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existing beliefs to be challenged. They don't want to
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feel obligated, right? They don't want the responsibility.
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They don't want to feel morally obligated, especially to have to
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change, or to act, or to do something different than what
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they're used to doing. You know, again, when we go back to
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innocent ignorance, which is simple ignorance, you know,
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that's just a lack of knowledge and information because people
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again may not have been exposed to it yet. But willful ignorance
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is when you actually have the opportunity and look with all of
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the libraries, all of the books, all of the podcasts, all of the,
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all of the information that's available to us. Right, we
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possess the opportunity to learn more, to learn more, to learn
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facts, this is why they ban books. P.S. This is why they are
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banning books at an alarming rate because they don't want
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people to be educated. Educated people, especially educated
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children and women, become dangerous because you can't
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control somebody who has a mind that is able to critically. And
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to think for themselves, and to point out, like, oh yeah, aren't
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we repeating the past? Aren't we repeating this? Aren't we just
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kind of whitewashing everything and pretending like all of this
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genocide and all of this awful shit, everything like didn't
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happen? Like it's like the people who deny the Holocaust or
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the people who, you know, deny genocides. People who don't
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believe in slavery. Like you might as well just believe that
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the world is flat. You know what I'm saying? But when you
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willfully, willfully give up the opportunity to learn more, to
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possibly change your mind, to be a more informed citizen, to
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educate yourself, to expand your point of view, this is why I do
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believe we should talk to people across the aisle. We should try
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to understand how another human being got there. At some point,
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I agree that there's just no listening or talking to. It's
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like talking to a wall sometimes, right? You know,
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going into there's a difference between going into a
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conversation trying to convince somebody of something versus
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going and curious and really trying to listen, and even if
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you do that with the most well intentions, the best intentions,
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you're going to find that some people just do not want to give
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it up. They do not want to learn anything. Called Papa, I have
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this great quote here. I'll hold it up. You can see it, right? So
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he says, true ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but
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the refusal to acquire it. Let me say that again: true
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knowledge is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to
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acquire it. So that that's a really big thing, right? It's
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like when we are deliberately and consciously choosing to
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avoid or reject relevant facts, or knowledge, or experience. So
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much is available to us, and there are just times when I I
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write about this in my memoir, and I say there were times when
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I just did not want the truthy truth. To accept the truthy
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truth was going to mean that I was going to have to change. I
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was going to have to look at some people in my life
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differently. I might have to end some relationships. I might have
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to make different choices. I might have to stop acting X, Y,
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and Z like a victim or ignorant or I didn't know, or whatever,
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whatever racket I was running on myself. Right? When we choose to
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be willfully ignorant, we are just not accepting. We are
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actively pushing away learning the truth. We're looking away.
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We're ignoring. We're denying. We're rejecting what's right in
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front of us, and we do this a lot. We do it a lot in our
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relationships. We do it in in I would say we do it in situations
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where we are benefiting from something, and it's like you see
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it all the time with people. Like you see it what they're
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doing,
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Unknown: what they're doing
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Karen Kenney: right now, raping and pillaging and building data
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centers and doing all this shit and they're just saying stuff
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like oh there's plenty of water oh climate change doesn't exist
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it's a bunch of bullshit for a bunch of people to become
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billionaires and get rich you know what I'm saying there is so
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much where people just put on the blinders and they go non
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like when we were little kids and you didn't want to hear
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something and you would close your eyes, you'd stick your
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fingers in your ears, and you would start making nonsense
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noises. Right, right now I see a lot of adults around the world
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making a lot of nonsense noises with their fingers in their
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ears, their thumbs up their ass, and they're not changing shit
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because they don't want to. They're enjoying being willfully
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ignorant because they're benefiting from it, or they
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believe they're benefiting from it in some way. Mostly, they
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just don't want their beliefs to be challenged-the ones that
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exist, the ones that they were taught, the ones that they were
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brought up on, the ones that were crammed down their throats
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from their people and their people before them, right? And a
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lot of times, people don't want to know, because then they'll be
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forced to act. We see it a lot in relationships too, where
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you're an enabler, right? And we would say, like, whether it's
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you're enabling somebody in your life who is fill in, fill in any
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kind of behavior, whether they gamble too much, drink too much,
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drug too much, shop too, whatever the thing is, right?
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Watching people, you know how they behave, and you're like,
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okay, this is not juris. This isn't good, and then you just
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put on the blind is because it would be way too uncomfortable
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to have that conversation with them, or sometimes even with
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ourselves. So willful ignorance is is not is not so great, and
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you know Plato talks about it. You know, I'll actually I'll
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save the study. I'll save the end because I love it. Okay. The
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third type. I don't. I didn't even know if this is a thing,
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but there's one thing when you're willfully ignorant, when
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you're just kind of like deliberately and consciously
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choosing not to see things. You don't want to see things. You
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don't want to have to think about it. You don't want to have
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to change. But then there's what I call. Belligerent, belligerent
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ignorance, and this is when you have a fucking attitude where a
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person not only lacks knowledge, they lack understanding, but
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they actively, adamantly, right reject correct information. Not
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only are they just not willing to see it, or do any research,
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or read a fucking book or educate themselves. They're
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refusing, like doubling down, refusing to learn, or they
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behave aggressively when you question something of this.
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They're very like some s words, some s words that come up when I
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think about it is selfish, smug, and self righteous. Does anybody
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here know anybody like that? Just, just double in hands if
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you know what I'm talking about, right? This is like an active,
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adamant refusal to learn, right? Simply, rather than just not
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being like not interested in a fact, right? They literally just
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like avoid and reject evidence. They they won't listen to
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anything logical. They'd rather argue and just go in circles
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instead of God forbid, maybe seeing somebody else's point of
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view, trying to understand another person's lived
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experience, and maybe look, we've all maybe have been there
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at some point when we feel threatened, when something about
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us, our own identity, you know, feels threatened, we can double
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down. You know, I I experience this as a sort of like
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stubbornness. You know what I'm saying? So there's hostility and
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aggression, this pushback, this overcorrection. When when you
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mention like hey did you read that study or hey did you talk
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to so and so or hey did you look this up you're often met with
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the number one thing is defensiveness you're you're met
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with anger people get combative you know people like really
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start to push back they come out swinging this is what I say they
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come out swinging so rather than engage with something or another
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person through curiosity, like "huh, tell me more about that. I
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don't know that I agree.
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I don't know that you're going to change my mind, but like,
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tell me more about that. Rather than approaching it that way,
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they just absolutely are smug. They have an inflated. Somebody
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once said it like this: They have an inflated sense of
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certainty, and the one thing that I will say, having just
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turned 58, the older I get, right, it is just so painfully
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clear to me that there is so much shit that I don't know.
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There is so much that when I look back when I was younger and
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I thought I knew a thing or I thought I knew a person and I
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just thought Jesus Christ I didn't know anything right I I I
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I just realize more and more and more you know and especially if
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you're patient and you pause and you give things a little bit of
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time, things will reveal themselves. You'll be so adamant
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and so sure. Like when you know when we're kids, when we're
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teenagers, we thought we knew everything. You couldn't tell us
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jack shit. And then you get a little older and you realize,
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like, oh my god, I was kind of an idiot. I was so certain. I
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was so sure. I was so full of myself, right? So, and some
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people even take this like lack of information, this lack of
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education, this lack of proper like like literally like doing
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your due diligence and having proper information. They take it
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as a point of pride, right? It's a point of pride that they have
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this what they consider like some unshakable truth, but it's
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just like you see this a lot. I think with conspiracy theorists,
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you know what I mean, who just like double down and they're
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belligerent about it, but they're not just like doubling
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down and standing their ground. They do it like with this sheer
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conviction and smugness and self-righteousness and and it's
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gross. They behave aggressively and they refuse to learn. They
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refuse to see anything other than what they believe and what
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they've been taught. And it's just it's just negative. It's
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just negative. Not going to happen. Not on my watch. Not
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interested. I find it so fucking dull. I find people like that so
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dull. Maybe that's mean of me to say, but right now that's how I
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feel. And I always say I reserve the right to change my mind. I
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can, you know, I can forgive a lot of things in life, but
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stubbornness is just so unattractive to me. It's like
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I'm not talking about when people take a stand for what
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they believe in, I'm talking about when they have been
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presented with proof and evidence and facts and
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testimonials and other people's experiences, and they just go,
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"Nope, nope, not true, not happening, not all men, not all
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men. You know what I'm saying? Okay, so these are the three
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types of ignorance. That I'm kind of talking about today, and
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I want to talk about them because we are all, we are all.
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What's the word I'm looking for? We can all be susceptible.
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That's the word. We can all be susceptible to these kinds of
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things, and it can be dangerous. And if we're not curious and
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we're not open-minded, that that's the one thing that I
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think of when I think of ignorance. It's
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close-mindedness. It's small-mindedness. It's to me, it
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is a thought system totally based on fear, where I
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experience that like I'm making fists right now, like tight,
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tight, right? And I think of fear like that, and I think of
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curiosity and love and an open mind. It's like opening the
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hands. The hands become soft. It's like lean in. Tell me more.
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How did you get there? Let me understand your point of view.
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Because a lot of times, once you hear somebody's stories, once
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you hear their past, once you hear what they've been through,
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their choices, their beliefs, right, their stories, their
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identity. It starts to make a little bit more sense, so you
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can have a little more empathy and compassion. It doesn't mean
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we're just going to forgive all kinds of ignorance all the time
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for everything, but it helps us to kind of be a little bit more
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approachable, a little bit more kind to each other.
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But when you're when you are willfully being ignorant
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consistently all the time, or when you step into that
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belligerent smirking like smug assholery, it's like no, no, not
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interested. You know, no, not a zip, nothing, no negatory. Okay,
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here's the Plato quote that I love, and this is a great quote
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to kind of wrap things up on. And again, take what I'm
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sharing. You know, I don't. I'm not using these titles because
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these are very like, you know, there's nuances to everything.
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And this isn't to call people out or to point fingers. I'm
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saying that these are like things, red flags to watch out
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for in our own thinking, in our own attachment to being right,
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in our own behaviors, because it's just going to get weirder
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and weirder and weirder. Like right now, like you turn on,
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like we we leave Bob Ross on for Bunch, right for Bunchy. So we
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watch, we hear Bob Ross a lot, and just the political ads right
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now are just like out of this world, insane, and it's just
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going to get crazier and crazier and crazier. So we have to look
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at the places within ourselves where we have that simple,
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innocent ignorance, and how can we do better there? How can we
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apologize and and do more? Then we have to notice the places in
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ourselves where we have that willful ignorance, where we
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really don't want our existing beliefs to be challenged. We
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don't want any facts or figures, right? Because it's
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uncomfortable. We don't want to be uncomfortable. And then we
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have the belligerent ignorance, where we are just doubling down
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on nonsense and we're being kind of assholes, you know. Like I
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said, not attractive. So we want to look out for this in
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ourselves. You might want to look out for it in the people
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close to you, in your friend group, in your family, in the
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politicians, in the people that you give your money to, spend
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time with, learn from, etc. Go to church with, whatever. Okay,
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this is the Plato quote. He says, "I'll hold this one up too
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because it's it's really fantastic. He says we can easily
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forgive a child who's afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of
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life is when men are afraid of the light. Right? We can easily
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forgive a child who's afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of
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life is when men are afraid of the light. That's a big one. So
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that's what I got for you today, beautiful people. Thank you for
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tuning in. Oh, may we all continue to just get better and
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better and better on this human journey. On this, as Prince
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says, on this thing called life. May we be kinder. May we be more
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compassionate and patient and merciful and loving, and I'm
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also gonna kind of. This is what I think about when I think about
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how I feel about people who are belligerently ignorant. Oh, my
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sweetie got me this. So Batsy Head's one of my favorite
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artists, and I have a bunch of I have two now two originals,
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which is a big deal, and a couple of prints and stuff like
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that, a bunch of prints actually. But this is an
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original, and my sweetie got this for me. This is how I feel
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about I'm holding this up for you. It basically says, "Kindly
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gather thy fuckery and skedaddle. Kindly gather thy
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fuckery and skedaddle. That's how I feel. Just skedaddle with
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your with your willful and your belligerent ignorance. You know
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what I'm saying? Let's do better, people. The world needs
24:54
us to do better. The animals need us to do better. The
24:57
children need us to do better. We all. Just need to get our
25:00
heads out our asses and and not be as ignorant as apparently a
25:05
lot of us appear to be. So, let's do better, shall we? Okay,
25:10
wherever you go, may you leave yourself and the animals and the
25:15
people in the planet, the environment better than how you
25:18
first found it. Wherever you go, may you and your energy, and
25:23
your love, and your presence, and your your your your open
25:30
mindedness and your curiosity, may it be a blessing. And also
25:36
go check out KarenKenney.com. That's where you can find all
25:39
the stuff I'm up to.
25:41
If you want to get on my mailing list, if you want to learn about
25:43
Thai yoga, massage, yoga classes, whatever I got going
25:46
on. But I appreciate you being here, and thank you for
25:50
listening. And I'm sending you so much love. Bye. Hey, thanks
25:55
so much for listening to the show. I really love spending
25:58
some time together. Now, if you dig the show or know someone
26:01
that could benefit from this episode, please share it with
26:04
them and help me to spread the good word and the love. And if
26:08
you want to be in the know about all of my upcoming shenanigans,
26:12
head on over to karenkenney.com/signup and join
26:17
my list. It'll be wicked fun to stay in touch. Bye.