{"id":21918,"date":"2016-10-01T17:59:02","date_gmt":"2016-10-01T22:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21918"},"modified":"2016-10-01T17:59:02","modified_gmt":"2016-10-01T22:59:02","slug":"thinking-dangerously-in-the-age-of-normalized-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21918","title":{"rendered":"Thinking Dangerously in the Age of Normalized Ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"headline\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2016\/09\/30\/thinking-dangerously-in-the-age-of-normalized-ignorance\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Thinking Dangerously in the Age of Normalized Ignorance<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"post_meta\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-87229 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2016\/09\/11191129216_3b6aca11cb_z.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\" srcset=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2016\/09\/11191129216_3b6aca11cb_z.jpg 510x, http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2016\/09\/11191129216_3b6aca11cb_z-300x225.jpg 300x\" alt=\"CC BY 2.0\" width=\"510\" height=\"383\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"post_content\">\n<div id=\"attachment_87229\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\">\n<p align=\"right\">Photo by new 1lluminati |\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>What happens to a society when thinking is eviscerated and is disdained in favor of raw emotion? [1] What happens when political discourse functions as a bunker rather than a bridge? What happens when the spheres of morality and spirituality give way to the naked instrumentalism of a savage market rationality? What happens when time becomes a burden for most people and surviving becomes more crucial than trying to lead a life with dignity? What happens when domestic terrorism, disposability, and social death become the new signposts and defining features of a society? What happens to a social order ruled by an \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2014\/05\/23\/the-economics-of-contempt\/\">economics of contempt<\/a>\u201d that blames the poor for their condition and wallows in a culture of shaming?<a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2016\/09\/30\/thinking-dangerously-in-the-age-of-normalized-ignorance\/#_edn2\" name=\"_ednref2\">[2]<\/a>\u00a0What happens when loneliness and isolation become the preferred modes of sociality? What happens to a polity when it retreats into private silos and is no longer able to connect personal suffering with larger social issues? What happens to thinking when a society is addicted to speed and over-stimulation? What happens to a country when the presiding principles of a society are violence and ignorance? What happens is that democracy withers not just as an ideal but also as a reality, and individual and social agency become weaponized as part of the larger spectacle and matrix of violence?<a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2016\/09\/30\/thinking-dangerously-in-the-age-of-normalized-ignorance\/#_edn3\" name=\"_ednref3\">[3]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The forces normalizing and contributing to such violence are too expansive to cite, but surely they would include: the absurdity of celebrity culture; the blight of rampant consumerism; state-legitimated pedagogies of repression that kill the imagination of students; a culture of immediacy in which accelerated time leaves no room for reflection; the reduction of education to training; the transformation of mainstream media into a mix of advertisements, propaganda, and entertainment;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thinking Dangerously in the Age of Normalized Ignorance Photo by new 1lluminati |\u00a0CC BY 2.0 What happens to a society when thinking is eviscerated and is disdained in favor of raw emotion? [1] What happens when political discourse functions as a bunker rather than a bridge? What happens when the spheres of morality and spirituality [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5493,8347,417,854],"class_list":["post-21918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-counterpunch","tag-henry-giroux","tag-ignorance","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21919,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21918\/revisions\/21919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}