The psychology of willful ignorance

KERA's Think

KERA

Society & Culture, 071003, Kera, Think, Krysboyd

4.8 • 861 Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Modern life means information is a click away, but often it feels better to keep our heads in the sand. Mark Lilla, professor of the humanities at Columbia University, joins host Krys Boyd to discuss the age-old impulse to shield ourselves from information, why that might save our sanity, and what that means for our deep-seated ideas of innocence. His book is “Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	The 2024 election was a lot. And now that we're past it, you might be avoiding political news
0:07.8	altogether, or you might want to understand the other side of the aisle, but without poisoning
0:13.4	your algorithm or treading into online territory that feels like an alien planet, you need left, right,
0:19.4	and center. It's your weekly political news check-in
0:22.0	with representatives from both parties,
0:24.2	so you can hear from the other guys
0:26.2	in a way that helps you actually make sense of it.
0:28.7	I'm David Green.
0:29.5	Join me on Left, Right, and Center from KCRW.
0:32.1	New episodes drop every Friday
0:33.8	wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:45.3	Thank you. Friday, wherever you listen to podcasts. When we have the sense that information is being withheld from us, by big corporations or the government or by people with whom we have our closest relationships, we usually can't just let it go.
0:56.8	Maybe because we understand knowledge as a form of power, the perception that we are out of the loop can trigger an insatiable curiosity.
1:04.8	And yet, it's not like we want to know everything.
1:08.6	Not only do we sometimes steer clear of unpleasant facts, we even
1:12.5	manage to hide certain truths from ourselves. From KERA in Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd.
1:19.7	My guest, Mark Lilla, is Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, and he has long been
1:25.0	interested in what he calls the will to ignorance because it's just as much a
1:29.4	part of us as the will to know, but often hiding in plain sight so that we don't even acknowledge it.
1:35.2	His new book is called Ignorance and Bliss on Wanting Not to Know. Mark, welcome to think.
1:41.0	Thanks, Chris. Good to be here. You open the book by giving us a little twist on Plato's
1:46.6	allegory of the cave. Will you summarize your version here? Well, in my version, it's about a man who is
	...

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