Shame of ignorance
December 20th, 2022
Can you enjoy reading a book, learning new concepts and visions altogether with scholarly proof — and yet feel ashamed at the same time? Apparently, I can.
A few pages in a book I was reading last night, made me feel this way. A short part of a book that involved the history of the societies of Native Americans made me aware of my ignorance of that subject. And that was only compounded by the fact that I lived for more than twenty years in the United States and had countless opportunities to learn about it, and I didn't. Shamefully, I become aware that my knowledge of Native American history is still sadly based on movies. There is no depth to it. There is no distinction between different societies — from eastern seaboard woodlands to the great plains to the Rockies to the southwest to the northwest tribes. All different tribes had different paths of development, different arts and cultures, and different economy and different societal structures. And I am ignorant of all this.
The same emotion came over me shortly after. This time when I read a few pages about Mesoamerican (pre-Columbian) societies in Mexico and Central America. Here the story is a little different. I had a period of time in my life when I read book after book on this subject. I was fascinated by it and spent a lot of time expanding my knowledge — especially about the art of those societies, from Olmec to Aztecs. But that was twenty-five years ago. Since then, historical and anthropological scholarship and new discoveries and new theories abounded — and I wasn't aware of those developments. I was astounded by what is now considered a firm theory and that the knowledge I gained years ago is wrong and obsolete.
What can I do? A day has only so many hours I can devote to reading and learning. There are so many other subjects that interest me that I have an extremely hard time deciding in which direction to go. Which subject will be the next? And how much time I can spend on one particular interest, before realizing that there are many others, just as interesting and wanting my attention. One thing is for sure — I will not waste my time when so many things are of deep interest to me. And second — I already admitted my ignorance and shame in that lack of knowledge, so I will try to methodically purge stereotypes from my thinking, so I don't mistake them for any kind of knowledge.
