I Resign- William Burke

Ignorance

I resign from ignorance and ignorant people. For years I have tried to accept some level of ignorance on the part of many people as a given. I hypothesized to myself that perhaps I am simply unperceptive and that the people I have labeled as ignorant really just believe differently from myself. I am tired of continuing to support my own illusion. Too many people are too unbelievably intellectually, morally, and ethically irresponsible. Similarly for a portion on my life, I convinced myself that this is something mainly in America, and that I could recognize this thanks to years of expensive schooling. This again was another farce, and I realized this as I grew older and noticed both the omnipresence of this same ignorance all around the world, as well as perceptiveness and intelligence outside of my own circle of private schooling. It is clear now that everywhere there are both people who maintain their ignorance, and others who notice it. This is not an American phenomenon, merely an American stereotype; it is a human phenomenon.

I am exhausted by people who argue some sort of point, yet are unable to articulate their own arguments, and fall back to referencing fellow supporters in their given point. To be fair I am consistent to this end, and I don’t really care what the subject of argument might be. From war to poverty to health to even the most basic of concepts and arguments, I am tired of listening to unfounded, ignorant blather from people whose viewpoints are based on conjecture, misunderstanding, and guesses. Personally I adhere to my own criticism as much as I can, in that in an area I am unsure in, I won’t take a position because I am unsure of my own knowledge.

Having spent extensive time within hospitals, with countless doctors, and under careful care of both cardiologists and Infectious disease doctors, I become particularly annoyed about ignorance and presumption in areas of medicine. The concept that a person might not get a vaccine or immunization for anything really, is almost comical. Some people suppose that their individual immune system is just so special that they are able to fight off bacteria and disease especially well. I can draw quickly from this that this person lacks any real sort of medical knowledge, any sort of self perception since they somehow deemed themselves qualified to make health decisions, and also that they are especially ignorant because they have blown by the possibility that getting immunized affects other people besides themselves. This same relative situation happens absurdly frequently in elementary, middle, and high schools. In these cases it is the combined ignorance of both parent and child who manage to be so self involved that they have a clearly sick child attend school, because they could bear to miss a day or two. The repercussion of this is of course many children getting sick, and everyone missing school, including the original child who has allowed his own sickness to get worse by not addressing it when it was noticed.