Ignorance is a Disease

I have heard a lot about why this should be true, that Starbucks is filling the pockets of Israel Military to drop bombs on innocent people. Well, even the possibility of that makes you want to stop getting your coffee from there.

Now, this text is not going to be about why we shouldn’t boycott Starbucks or why we should. I want to share with you how I found out how much we are exposed to ignorance and how lethal it can get.

How do we accept facts? What should happen to say: “Right! Now, I know this is a fact!” I am afraid, the bar has been very low for me, and I suspect that is the case for most of us. It’s not just about Starbucks, it happens everyday. Just a single negative comment from a friend and that other person goes right into my blacklist of “bad people”. The problem is this blacklisting is automatic, I am not even conscious about this.

Now, the journey out of the suffering of ignorance has been a hard but an enjoyable one, and I am still at the beginning. But for now, I want to share with you how I found out the facts I kept as true about Starbucks, were not that kind of true.

It starts with me sitting inside a Starbucks, as I couldn’t find any close Tim Hortons there. I was staring at the beautiful interior. It was a mixed sense of pleasure and guilt. I was thinking it’s a good place to have a cup of coffee, but I shouldn’t really enjoy it. At the end, I hoped to God this place can someday come out of the darkness. Later, it turned out, it was me that should come out of the darkness: the darkness of ignorance. Do not assume I mean the darkness wasn’t there for them, I simply mean, with my eyes closed, I couldn’t see the lights, if any.

One day, I felt like I should go and seek the truth myself. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do. So, I used the most basic way of searching for the truth: Google. Well, I know that’s not the right way of doing it, as you don’t know if the sources you find are reliable or not. Anyway, I had to start somewhere.

The first thing I searched for was “Starbucks and bomb”, and then I searched for “Starbucks and support of war”. What followed then, was visiting more than 100 pages about Starbucks, that took almost my whole day.

Now, it’s time for a big confession. When you want to prove something true, you will try as hard as you can to collect facts that support it. You may try to see the other side of the story, but they all will be called liars and you will try to ignore them as much as you can. It’s hard. It’s really hard when you go out for the truth itself. If you want to justify yourself, it’s easy: Just judge the opposers. It has been the case for me for a good period of time. It’s not just about that somehow I liked the atmosphere of Starbucks, it’s about every single thing that I think should be good, but apparently it’s not.

Now, to the other side of the story. I wasn’t trying to tell myself a beautiful lie so I can enjoy going to Starbucks. I searched to find the source of the problem. I was surprised when I found this letter:

Well, nothing to defend here. No more excuses. That was what I felt when I first saw this letter. But there was a twist to this letter: The author of this letter is Andrew Winkler. He wrote this as a parody. I believe, I was afraid that this letter could be true, that the first time I read it, I didn’t see how unreal it is. Now you feel like: “Sure, but there should be supporting sources to this parody.” I felt the same.

Now, it’s time to integrate all the facts.

That’s about the facts. Now, what is the final result? It really depends on you. I will just add my conclusion here as a reference. But, in the end, it’s just you that should decide what to believe.

It feels good to see that you can help. That you can do something about the catastrophe you see. That you are not that small that you feel you are. So, it feels good to believe that a company is funding bombs that kill innocent people. Then, there’s something I can do. The company will fail if we all stop buying from them. So, when I hear it, it hurts to believe that they are doing this relentless act, but deep below I feel good that I found a place that I can help, that I can stop bad things. This is the disease. The lethal disease of ignorance.

You may think it’s bad if we assume things, but not lethal. The problem here is not that you assume something is right, which is not. We don’t know the truth about a lot of things. That’s not the problem. The problem is, in this way, we will try to accept things that we think they are good for us, to give us a feeling of accomplishment. We just want to live a happy life and be an effective part of the world while we are here. That’s what we want, but are we really doing this? That ignorance makes it a definite no. This is where prejudice begins. As we are not seeking the truth, but proving that we are right, that we are effective parts of human society.

Now, my final thoughts on the Starbucks. I thought it is very obvious that they are helping Israel, that I didn’t even look into it. I see now, it could be anything but obvious. Yes, I don’t know about behind the scenes. So, what will most of us will say at this point?

We may say: “Okay. Ignorance is bad. I will try to look more next time. Right now, I don’t have any facts to prove me there’s no behind the scenes act, so I rather not go to Starbucks, because the possibility of them helping Israel to drop bombs on innocent people is not something I can live with.” There it is. Ignorance kicks in, again.

You may ask why? For one moment, let’s forget about all of the things we heard from the people, let’s forget about that fake letter. Where is the certainty that Starbucks is currently helping Israel? All we know is that they have stated they don’t want to help Israel, that they don’t even have a store in Israel. Why is it we are so attached with the “behind the scenes” thing? Will you boycott every single company that you don’t know for sure what they are doing behind the scenes?

That calls for the next point: Ignorance has inertia, or simply we are afraid to be proven wrong. If we have believed something for a while, we are not willing to give up that idea easily. Kathryn Schulz, in that same TED talk, brings an analogy that shows how futile this resistance is:

That’s it. Next time, passing a Starbucks store, ask yourself what would you do if you didn’t have your initial belief, and all you had were the facts you learned later? It really doesn’t matter if you go to a Starbucks store or not. What matters is to get rid of the ignorance. All it takes is a moment of doubt, to start questioning everything we have assumed so far. That’s the ultimate cure of ignorance.

May the missiles of doubt,
bring down the concrete walls of fake certainty.

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