Much has been said and written about the deleterious effects of political correctness, which makes it next to impossible to speak truth without meeting volleys of censorship and defamation. Another cognitive tendency, however, is now reaching massive proportions, namely the pervasive refusal to learn, to ferret out facts from the welter of conflicting claims and competing opinions that obscure or deform the exchange of ideas on which the health of a democracy depends, in short, to seek truth. No less destructive to the existence of an informed public than the scourge of political correctness, the lassitude that afflicts us is no doubt, or at least in part, owing to an increasingly dysfunctional educational system at all levels from primary to post-graduate, and operates in conjunction with a widespread cultural propensity to a sort of epicurean laziness that comes with prolonged affluence and an entitlement mentality. Three recent instances of willful ignorance got me thinking...(Read Full Article)