Dan Kaplan: Ignorance is bliss with blanket statements

There have been more than a few times when, in perfectly productive historical debates with my classically-trained philosopher dad, I get trapped by my examples and give serious consideration to abandoning the best of my instincts and going to my Texan grandfather to see if I might borrow one or two of his custom-modified Soviet-era assault rifles. Usually, though, I have resorted to the less bloody but equally horrendous tactic of what I call reactionary blanket statementing.

We have been in the middle of discussing whether or not globalization might ever pull the poorest out of poverty, and I'll be arguing that it doesn't seem likely, given that the IMF and the World Bank seem either incompetent or beholden to corporate interests, and I'll get cornered by my less-than-firm grasp of the subject and blurt, "Yeah, but economics doesn't care about people!"

And then he, being a classically-trained philosopher AND my dad, will pick apart everything that I've said, remind me that I do this every time and tell me how to avoid doing it in the future.

And the man is right, and I, for the most part, have learned my lesson. Unfortunately, there are many among us who have not. This is for you.

Everyone else: raise your hand if you've ever been in a class on a controversial subject and, during a particularly contentious point, an overeager someone leaps in with arguments that a) everyone has heard before or b) are only slight variations on everything else that person has ever said about anything. Much of the time, this person will contradict himself, backtrack and then do it again. Some of the time, he will become fidgety, hysterical and defensive; he may even start to sweat. And most of the time, he will not have done the night's reading.

The last is the most important point: while we, the helpless head-shakers, eye-rollers, smirkers and knowing-glancers have had to trudge through the countless spurts of nonsense and watch our teachers (often TAs) try to pacify and contain the class-jacker with double-edged pleasantries, the babbler himself has lost the most. For he, the perpetrator of pernicious puffery, has learned, and will forever continue to learn, nothing. He has so swaddled himself in his assumptions that he sees no need to test them; any cleverly articulated challenges to his preconceived notions are automatically blocked out or avoided entirely.

If he engages in outside discussion, he usually does so with only the similar-minded or less well read; he'll frequent the Times' editorial pages but have never opened The Wall Street Journal's; he blames the Greens for Bush or Bill Clinton for everything; the Jews are right; the Jews are wrong; sweatshops should be closed; alcohol, nicotine and caffeine are fine, but everything else is DRUGS; and homosexuality is evil because it's not natural and God said so.

The arguments change (yet are always predictable) but one thing remains constant: this person knows quite little about his subject. He'll say that capitalism is evil and that corporations are worse, but he will stumble trying to tell you what capitalism really is (I would) or how any one corporation actually works.

But you can bet your closest friend's cahones that he will mention Enron, WorldCom and the like to prove his point. It is probable that he knows how little he knows -- this would explain the hysteria and outbursts of sweat -- but it matters not: he is perfectly willing to go on not knowing, no matter how destructive his opinionated non-knowledge can be.

And so he never learns anything new, his thinking never matures or takes a hint of nuance, and 30 years later, he's taught his children to be just like him. Most of the time, and despite the requisite domineering, lack of self-awareness and selfishness, it's innocent, harmless and even funny.

But the problem is that this brand of ignorance has a way of becoming confident, and self-assured ignorance has a way of becoming sinister. Its propagators can chant ludicrous, spiteful things, and its followers will lap it up and return ecstatic endorsements, drunk on what they "know is true" and the comfort that "everyone who knows" agrees.

This cycle feeds and confirms itself, and it can combine with the worst things we have inside us to spawn hatred, violence and the notions that crashing a jet full of people through two Manhattan pillars and the humans at work inside them is a good idea, that this sort of thing leads to heaven, that apocalypse is something God has wanted for us all along.

And yet, despite all of that, I am still that guy.

Dan Kaplan is a senior History major from New York City.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.