Earlier this weekend, I attended a funeral. It was a Catholic funeral and being Jewish I found myself confused by the unfamiliar rituals of this service. In class this week, we talked about how people lie because they are ignorant and many times people blame ignorance for others anger or violence towards a belief. I started to think about this during the service. Since I was confused by these new rituals, I guess I could be categorized as ignorant of a belief different from my own, but I never felt violence or anger towards the difference. In fact, I found the difference interesting and eye-opening because it was a new experience.
In the past teachers have said that genocides like the holocaust started because of ignorance and close-mindedness but I feel that these are two extremely different traits. Ignorance is just the fact of not knowing or understanding but how you perceive something based on this ignorance that really where the issue lies. Close-mindedness is being unwilling to see or deal with a difference because of the irrational fear of the unknown. This fear of another group can lead to the violence and anger that everyone associates with ignorance. But if in seeing this foreign religion and embracing the difference, accepting that some parts I may agree and some I may disagree, then it can take an opposite stance, by making the world a more interesting, diverse and enriching place. I was ignorant to the rituals of this religion, but does that really make me a bad person or a person who hates everything and everyone different from myself? No, it just makes me human. Nobody knows everything. It's the choice of what to do with this opportunity-to learn from it and embrace it, or be afraid of it-that defines who I am and what kind of person I can become.
Dani,
ReplyDeleteI was reading your post and I found myself agreeing with everything you were saying about accepting something foreign or different, despite what you might think about it. The post really alludes to the conflict between the USA and the Middle East, which basically stems from ignorance.
But then I thought about a different example, for instance if the experience you had with this other religion had been something obscene, or something that you thought was incredibly insulting. I would probably be more inclined to form a bad opinion towards this thing that I didn't know if I found it to be insulting, and I wouldn't be as accepting of it later, even if I learned more about it. My point is that sometimes ignorance can lead to violence or bad feelings even in the most accepting of people.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI see what you're saying about witnessing an unfavorable event and then forming an opinion about it. That makes sense to me, but on the other hand, and unpleasing event could be some sort of ritual or maybe you just perceived it incorrectly, or differently because it is new to you. What I'm trying to say is that it is ok to not understand something, or to be ignorant, but the issue is what you do once you have this new experience. Are you willing to learn about a foreign topic to you, or do you disregard everything that pertains to that subject because you judged it on your initial perception of the event? Yes, as you said this can lead to violence, but the key point there is that it-leads-to violence, but is not the actual source of this violence. Ignorance itself is just the confusion or misunderstanding, but it is how you choose to perceive this that can either lead to violence or acceptance.