Ignorance is no virtue

Did you know that spicy food cures covid? Chewing on a handful of pepper everyday can ensure that you never get covid. Or malaria. Or typhoid fever. Drinking hot water immediately after a meal reduces belly fat. None of this is true of course. They are all absolute rubbish but so is much of the stuff that gets traction on social media. A few days ago, I got a forwarded text from a well-meaning friend about how the word ‘Xmas’ is part of the secular world’s “war on Christmas.”  Each year I see versions of this forwarded post floating around, warning Christians not to use the word or accept its usage because it is evil, satanic, idolatory etc etc etc. Worse is that they always end with a request for the recipient to “send it to someone else to educate them.” There’s nothing quite as ironic (and as funny) as someone creating an ignorant post to “educate” others because that post which claims to be “correcting big error!” is as ignorant as they come. 

Xmas isn’t the modern world’s invention to water down Christianity or to remove “Christ” from Christmas. In fact, the word isn’t modern at all. It was first used as far back as the mid 1500s. The “X” comes from the Greek letter Chi, which, per Google search, is the first letter of the Greek word Christós (in Greek: Χριστός), and Christ in English, while the suffix -mas is from the Latin-derived Old English word for Mass. Xmas has been around (and accepted for centuries) as being a synonym for Christmas. Don’t let ignorant folks tell you otherwise.  

Speaking of ignorant folks, while there is nothing wrong in not knowing everything (no one can lay claim to that except the truly foolish), there’s everything wrong with not wanting to know. There are times it appears to me that folks are determined to make ignorance a 21st century virtue. And by ‘we,’ I don’t mean just Nigerians. In the US where I live, politicians campaign on ignorance and run successfully. (Trump became president after all and in my beloved Georgia, Walker ran a tight race against a more competent Warnock, who, thank goodness, won). We seem to eschew critical thinking and whatever we see on WhatsApp is gospel truth, even things that we can disprove with a click of the button.  

There’s never been a time when access to knowledge was so easily available, so freely available and yet so many of us are loath to avail ourselves of it. It wouldn’t matter too much if this didn’t have real life consequences (and not just for the individual concerned). Ndi Igbo say that when one finger dips itself in oil, it spreads to the entire hand. When we relish in ignorance and vote in ignorant folks for example, the entire community suffers it. Those that preach hate and division; tribalism and racism; sexism and misogyny count on the ignorance of those they are preaching to, to provide fertile ground for the seed they are sowing. That’s how radicals are born. The harvests of all these divisions touch us all eventually.  

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It is not a coincidence that we are living in a more polarised world where folks can no longer “do nuance.” Things are either black or white, you are either for or against. Anyone who criticises you is a ‘hater.’ Anyone who questions you is evil. There is no dialogue, folks are cancelled without any room for redemption, we are unwilling to extend grace to those who ask for it and empathy is a dying art. Ignorance is an epidemic and the sooner we begin to fight it, the better for us. Our civilisation depends on it.  

That fight begins with the man in the mirror. When next you get that forwarded WhatsApp text, remind yourself that anyone – even the village drunk- can sit behind their keyboard and string together any falsehood. Even if the message asks to be forwarded on, especially if it asks to be forwarded on, please do your due diligence before spreading it. It shouldn’t take too much of your time to verify stuff.  Sometimes, like in the case of Xmas, all it took (for me) was a long ago remembered conversation and a 10 second Google search. Be curious. Knowledge is power, and you have it at your fingertips. Ignorance is no virtue. It isn’t neutral. It is a choice.