This website
will define willful ignorance as the active denial of injustice. The separation
between the injustice and the self allows for ignorance, and is enhanced when
one cannot physically see the problem or its consequences. According to Locke,
injustice is the violation of an individual’s right to life, liberty, and
property. However, when individual preservation is not in question, Locke
posits, he has to do “as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and
may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the
life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb,
or goods of another” [1]. Willful ignorance allows for injustice as defined by
Locke by avoiding one’s responsibility to ensure justice to all other beings.
Individuals are motivated to engage in willful ignorance because
it ensures a level of comfort through the elimination of individual
responsibility. In modern society, people are engulfed in their personal lives,
choosing to focus on individual achievement as opposed to societal progression.
The sole concern of the individual for their own justice allows for the willful
ignorance of injustice to all other beings.
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| Taken from Collectively Conscious |
Furthermore, when a society is formed, citizens give up their
right to pursue individual justice and hand it over to the government, which
dispenses justice according to the written laws of society. This separation
allows for the propagation of willful ignorance; the failure of the government
to establish justice, or act against injustice, does not translate to the
obligation of the individual to do so.
The ability of individuals to engage in willful
ignorance is often afforded through positions of power and privilege. To learn
more about the relationship between willful ignorance and privilege, click here.
This website explores various manifestations of
willful ignorance through the lenses of social justice and policy. Mika discusses the willful ignorance of
industrial capitalism and factory farming through the lens of commodity
fetishism; Christina focuses on United States politicians
choosing to be willfully ignorant on the the global epidemic of Climate Change; Colleen highlights the willful ignorance of
poverty and homelessness through examining the effects of Hurricane Katrina and
the way society ignores poverty until disaster strikes; Taylor relates the War on Terror and the
American response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th to willful
ignorance and denial of the true motives of Al Qaeda;
1. John Locke, The Second Treatise of Civil Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration, (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002), 3. Accessed November 29, 2016
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