Post by CampGreyhound on Sept 22, 2013 13:34:38 GMT -5
When Did Ignorance Become a Point of View?
“Ignorance” is a funny word. Most people think of it as an insult, if they are told that they are “ignorant” of something or other. And often it is meant as such. “Ignoramus”—eg: one who is ignorant--is perhaps even a more cutting word. It certainly sounds ugly.
We are all, however, ignorant of many things. I plead guilty to being ignorant of fishing, ignorant of how to read music, and ignorant of Shakespeare, among many more things that others have long ago committed to muscle memory, and which have somehow escaped my grasp.
We can’t all know much about too many of the bizzillions of things in this kaleidoscopic universe. So I guess we might say that we are essentially a species of ignoramuses, if one were to take a truly holistic view of it.
Be that as it may, most of us take a healthy interest in something. That healthy interest can even border on or become a passion, and usually, it’s all good. The rub being, that ignorance and passion are not mutually exclusive.
For example, I’m a guitarist. I’ve known and still know some really talented musicians. Some of them are incredible technicians, and quite passionate about their music. Some of them, however, are almost completely ignorant of the roots and origins of the music they love so passionately.
Neither their passion nor their ignorance, in this case, is a crime. Some people, however, might feel it is a crying shame that a gifted, modern blues guitar slinger had never even heard the music of Charley Christian, Big Bill Broonzy, Reverend Gary Davis, Memphis Minnie, Charley Patton, or others who helped define the idiom.
Revelations of that sort can greatly expand one’s own musical horizons and vision, as well as nurture a more profound understanding and sublime appreciation of the times and the culture that spawned such wondrous music, and from where they themselves, as musicians, have evolved.
So we see that ignorance is clearly only a state of mind. It’s not a pejorative at all.
It’s a choice we make by lack of curiosity.
And so we will steer the conversation, as we always do, to our iconic, beloved Racing Greyhound, the object of oceanic waves of our deepest passion.
He is a prodigy, yet more ancient than our own recorded history. He is an athlete of unthinkable grace and power, and he is a dozy couch companion of the most immobile sort. He is a hunter of ruthless and supreme skill, and he is the dove-natured, velveteen playmate for children of all ages.
In our pop culture of sensational sound bytes and 20-something second attention spans, the Greyhound has become little more than an object of pity to the vast majority of people who are aware of his existence, but are largely ignorant of him.
However, simply acknowledging his existence, or even passionately championing him as this pathetic object of pity, betrays an ignorance of the most profound sort.
If you were to stumble, trying not to step on a multi-faceted, jewel-like thing you found on your morning walk, you would not refer to it as “just another stone in the road”, would you? I wouldn’t. You wouldn’t take it to your local gym and ask the local muscle-heads about it—or even the local Zumba-dancers.
You would investigate what you had found, by consulting those who had experience with, and who had deep and extensive knowledge and understanding of such precious things. You would ask experts to tell you about it, what type of jewel it was, where it might have come from, and finally, what it was worth.
Yet many of the people who are most passionate about Greyhounds--without a doubt a diamond among canines—are content to derive their “greyhound information” from those who, while they may be excruciatingly passionate themselves, have no particular expertise, and who are more often than not, entirely ignorant of the Greyhound. Or, in the worst case scenario, from those ignoramuses, to whom the Greyhound is no multi-faceted jewel at all, but to whom he is just another stone in their road toward realizing a cultural or political agenda, and a source of donations for them.
So like some of my musician friends, we can remain happy and content inside our own cocoon, pleasing ourselves, without ever deepening our understanding of the source of our joy, never even sensing the rainbows and canyons of its history and evolution.
Or we can learn. We can choose to meet the greyhound in the field of his prism-like dimensionality. It is as green and verdant as any upon which he ever coursed after the wild hare. We see him through the mists of millennia, as easily as we can see him at the foot of the bed when we rise in the morning.
He is a grievous heartbreak, and he is transcendent triumph. He is a name on a pedigree of illustrious ancestors, and he is a member of your own family. He is as ancient as the trilithons of Stonehenge, and he is the new sensation of the pet world.
He is the glorious and flawlessly formed physical embodiment of thousands of years of adaptation and of selective breeding to a specific function, and he is the humblest and most unassuming of servants, always willing to go along, to get along and to please.
Ignorance is only a state of mind. It’s not a point of view.
If we choose to remain ignorant of the Greyhound, and to let those who are the most willfully ignorant of him continue to write his modern narrative, as we have come to know him, and as we need to know him, the racing greyhound will surely perish.
And then, dear reader, no amount of even the most inflamed and heartfelt passion will bring him back.
“Ignorance” is a funny word. Most people think of it as an insult, if they are told that they are “ignorant” of something or other. And often it is meant as such. “Ignoramus”—eg: one who is ignorant--is perhaps even a more cutting word. It certainly sounds ugly.
We are all, however, ignorant of many things. I plead guilty to being ignorant of fishing, ignorant of how to read music, and ignorant of Shakespeare, among many more things that others have long ago committed to muscle memory, and which have somehow escaped my grasp.
We can’t all know much about too many of the bizzillions of things in this kaleidoscopic universe. So I guess we might say that we are essentially a species of ignoramuses, if one were to take a truly holistic view of it.
Be that as it may, most of us take a healthy interest in something. That healthy interest can even border on or become a passion, and usually, it’s all good. The rub being, that ignorance and passion are not mutually exclusive.
For example, I’m a guitarist. I’ve known and still know some really talented musicians. Some of them are incredible technicians, and quite passionate about their music. Some of them, however, are almost completely ignorant of the roots and origins of the music they love so passionately.
Neither their passion nor their ignorance, in this case, is a crime. Some people, however, might feel it is a crying shame that a gifted, modern blues guitar slinger had never even heard the music of Charley Christian, Big Bill Broonzy, Reverend Gary Davis, Memphis Minnie, Charley Patton, or others who helped define the idiom.
Revelations of that sort can greatly expand one’s own musical horizons and vision, as well as nurture a more profound understanding and sublime appreciation of the times and the culture that spawned such wondrous music, and from where they themselves, as musicians, have evolved.
So we see that ignorance is clearly only a state of mind. It’s not a pejorative at all.
It’s a choice we make by lack of curiosity.
And so we will steer the conversation, as we always do, to our iconic, beloved Racing Greyhound, the object of oceanic waves of our deepest passion.
He is a prodigy, yet more ancient than our own recorded history. He is an athlete of unthinkable grace and power, and he is a dozy couch companion of the most immobile sort. He is a hunter of ruthless and supreme skill, and he is the dove-natured, velveteen playmate for children of all ages.
In our pop culture of sensational sound bytes and 20-something second attention spans, the Greyhound has become little more than an object of pity to the vast majority of people who are aware of his existence, but are largely ignorant of him.
However, simply acknowledging his existence, or even passionately championing him as this pathetic object of pity, betrays an ignorance of the most profound sort.
If you were to stumble, trying not to step on a multi-faceted, jewel-like thing you found on your morning walk, you would not refer to it as “just another stone in the road”, would you? I wouldn’t. You wouldn’t take it to your local gym and ask the local muscle-heads about it—or even the local Zumba-dancers.
You would investigate what you had found, by consulting those who had experience with, and who had deep and extensive knowledge and understanding of such precious things. You would ask experts to tell you about it, what type of jewel it was, where it might have come from, and finally, what it was worth.
Yet many of the people who are most passionate about Greyhounds--without a doubt a diamond among canines—are content to derive their “greyhound information” from those who, while they may be excruciatingly passionate themselves, have no particular expertise, and who are more often than not, entirely ignorant of the Greyhound. Or, in the worst case scenario, from those ignoramuses, to whom the Greyhound is no multi-faceted jewel at all, but to whom he is just another stone in their road toward realizing a cultural or political agenda, and a source of donations for them.
So like some of my musician friends, we can remain happy and content inside our own cocoon, pleasing ourselves, without ever deepening our understanding of the source of our joy, never even sensing the rainbows and canyons of its history and evolution.
Or we can learn. We can choose to meet the greyhound in the field of his prism-like dimensionality. It is as green and verdant as any upon which he ever coursed after the wild hare. We see him through the mists of millennia, as easily as we can see him at the foot of the bed when we rise in the morning.
He is a grievous heartbreak, and he is transcendent triumph. He is a name on a pedigree of illustrious ancestors, and he is a member of your own family. He is as ancient as the trilithons of Stonehenge, and he is the new sensation of the pet world.
He is the glorious and flawlessly formed physical embodiment of thousands of years of adaptation and of selective breeding to a specific function, and he is the humblest and most unassuming of servants, always willing to go along, to get along and to please.
Ignorance is only a state of mind. It’s not a point of view.
If we choose to remain ignorant of the Greyhound, and to let those who are the most willfully ignorant of him continue to write his modern narrative, as we have come to know him, and as we need to know him, the racing greyhound will surely perish.
And then, dear reader, no amount of even the most inflamed and heartfelt passion will bring him back.