Ignorance;

World’s Most Dangerous Weapon.

Poverty, diseases, corruption, crime, injustice, maladies and most human miseries originate in ignorance. Accessible knowledge and inspired life-long learning are the solutions.

It is part of human nature for some to take advantage of the weak and ignorant. Those with ill gotten and unearned gains fear competition from those who know more, are more capable and more powerful than they, and understand things they do not.

Human perception is severely limited by ignorance. Humans see, hear and understand very little and imagine even less. Without knowledge, access to information, and the skill to evaluate it, and a thirst for it, people cannot hope to imagine the future based upon current causes, or imagine how the future might be different based upon new choices

Many are incompetent due to mental deficiencies and illnesses and cannot see or understand that they themselves are incompetent.

Cultural ignorance and false cultural. Pregnant women eating river clay to nourish their unborn child, or that fertility spirits determine the yield of your crops, or demons make people do bad things, or that gods decide which women will bear children, or that an erupting volcano can be stopped by human sacrifice are cultural ignorance that still exists. Claiming that perpetual unemployment, theft, drug abuse, child molestation, mindless violence, gratuitous sex, irresponsibility and ignorance are cherished elements of your special ethnic culture is ridiculous.

Logic, reason, cause and effect errors; if you cannot determine with near certainty what causes what, or from this action what is the likely outcome, if you do this, this will certainly happen, if you cannot see probable events in advance by foresight, then you are truly ignorant. If you cannot choose correctly that this is likely, this is not, you have poor logic. If you cannot imagine the likely future results from current events, you are ignorant. If you do not think ahead, if you have not collected knowledge and some wisdom from experiences where you were paying attention, then you are truly ignorant and perhaps stupid. It’s important to figure out which one, ignorant you can fix.

Facts and beliefs, that’s all there is. Facts are known, provable, repeatedly demonstrated to be true within our perception and understanding throughout recorded history. Beliefs are structured guesses, feelings, improvable, not demonstrable, believed by groups of followers throughout recorded history and about the future. Beliefs are shrouded with magic, miracles, and mysticism, and writings and teachings by charismatic leaders believed by some to have special affinity with the spirit world, gods, or God. Much opportunity exists in the realm of beliefs for trickery, illusion, delusions, curses, possessions, mystic forces, paranormal, mental distractions and spiritual mumbo-jumbo; and therefore the perpetuation of myths, lies and ignorance by charlatans, psychotics, and the charismatically deficient of all kinds.  Human decisions are mostly or more often based upon beliefs

Encouraging ignorance and dependency has expanded rapidly the past 50 years. Government entitlement programs, required safety equipment, warning labels, blaming inanimate objects and third persons, allowing frivolous suits, not grading student academic performance and behavior, not keeping score in athletic games; if people are not compared to the most competent among us, how are they to learn what things they need to study and improve, and for what things have they become an acceptable person, and what things must be accomplished to become a human in good standing.

Louis D Brandeis said, “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”

I dislike nearly every view point and achievement of this intelligent and influential progressive Supreme Court Justice, except the most excellent insightful quote above. I doubt he ever understood the massive damage to human liberty his masterful persuasion brought.

Most programs and social systems in place today were ill conceived and hastily enacted without much, if any, thought as to their unintended consequences. Virtually none have been revisited, and nothing has since been created to evaluate their effectiveness or eliminate harm.

These programs and systems, safety nets, like Social Security, Medicare, criminal rehabilitation, Food Stamps, Welfare, Affirmative Action, the Drug War, Extended Unemployment benefits that gift or grant people excessive, perpetual, unearned benefits are promoting dependency, enshrining ignorance, and destroying self esteem.

You will get more of what you reward, and less of what you tax.

Achievement, forethought, conservation, responsibility, and self reliance are discouraged, taxed, and penalized.

Ignorance, incapability, carelessness, thoughtlessness, irresponsibility and dependency are encouraged, subsidized and rewarded.

If you:

Tax jobs and reward unemployment;

Tax family life and reward out of wedlock child birth;

Punish achievement, and reward birthrights;

Punish conservation, and reward wastefulness;

Discourage savings, encourage over-spending;

Criminalize rights, celebrate crime;

Demean citizenship, idolize the corrupt;

Then you are truly ignorant and corrupt, and likely stupid!