We seem to live in an age that disdains learning. While this is nothing particularly new (heck, back in the stone age when I was in high school, the really popular kids weren’t always the smartest) it has become apparent that as new discoveries are made around the world, the powers-that-be in the USA are determined to look firmly backwards and resist the progress of knowledge as much as they can.

I’m not that old (no, really, I’m not) and I am dismayed to see us go from the age of Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, and (so help me) Wernher von Braun, popularizers of learning all, to the age of George W. Bush and the “gentleman’s C” and the incurious mind.

All of us are ignorant. We can’t help it–there is too much to learn, too much to know, and no matter how much any one person may know on any given subject, guaranteed there is someone else out there who knows more.

But being ignorant is not the same thing as being stupid. There is no limit to the amount that an ignorant person can learn, if he or she refuses to remain ignorant–and, in many cases, has the courage to refuse to remain ignorant in the face of tremendous pressure to stick with the status quo.

The new year is coming, and what better resolution to make than to take a stand against ignorance in the new year? Taking a stand doesn’t need to mean manning the barricades as if it were the Revolution all over again. It just means that we as individuals can encourage the expansion of knowledge and the diminishing of ignorance, both within ourselves and in the world at large.

And it’s not difficult. In the coming series of messages I’ll talk about simple ways we all can take a stand.

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