The suspense is heightened by the fact that Theroux's characters aren't ignorant by choice.
And as the New York Times just editorialized, some politicians like it that way and have done what they can to keep us ignorant of our choices and to keep our doctors ignorant of what we desire toward our ends.
In the end, this is what worries me most about Foer's arguments — that so many are so ignorant of their food choices, so ignorant of agriculture, and, finally, so ignorant of what awaits us all.
It was argued that we could not leave the final word on such momentous decisions to ordinary voters: they didn't know what they really wanted, or they had been tricked into wanting something that would hurt them, or they were too ignorant to make informed choices, or maybe they quite simply wanted the wrong thing.
Furthermore, it is the bitterest of ironies when self-proclaimed feminists fall into the damsel in distress narrative by attempting to 'liberate' niqabi women while at the same time putting them down as being too ignorant to make their own choices.
People also face knowledge constraints they are neither perfectly informed nor totally ignorant of the implications of their choices, although in making those choices they try to process the available knowledge rationally.
In the age of information it is a choice to remain ignorant.
Such a comment actually betrays an incredibly ignorant assumption that somehow the choice has always only been between secular dictators like Mubarak or Muslim extremists championing bin Laden.
I think that's kind of ignorant," and, "Yes, I have more choice, but I'm still single and I need some help".
But all societies are complex – they just seem more so if you are ignorant of the dynamics that inform the choices made by individuals and communities.
