Ignorance and Insanity:

Ignorance and Insanity are two things I see, hear, or read about on a daily basis, and while this blog was originally intended for something else, it has been re-purposed to let me express my continued view on these two dancers on the stage of life.  Like Comedy and Tragedy, Ignorance and Insanity are closely linked, though sometimes misunderstood.  Being ignorant is too often thrown around as an insult, when it merely means a lack of information on a subject, or sometimes in general.  This can be naivety, or just a lack of experience.  Ignoramus is an insult that used to be much more frequently used to mean someone who is willfully ignorant, empty-headed, and a dunce.  Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but ignorance of something of a non-legality and non-morality issue is something I can abide.  I work at in an international retail company in the electronics department of my particular store.  Technical things such as what the difference is between hard-drive storage capacity and RAM capacity are things I can understand the lay person being ignorant on.  Asking when we might get more product in stock comes from ignorance and I am more than glad to take a brief moment to explain the limitations of our foreknowledge on such matters.  It's not stupidity, a lack of intelligence, it's just a lack of the knowledge.  We are all born ignorant on most things, the culturally accepted names for different colors, shapes, objects, and so forth, but we grow as others teach us.  It isn't shameful to be ignorant.  To be insane, however, may be.

Insanity is a spectrum of behaviors that are abnormal and outside the range of what is considered socially accepted levels of normal.  Someone becoming a danger to themselves or others may be seen as insanity.  Someone how has a different worldview, theology, sexuality or other differences are sometimes seen as insane by close-minded individuals.  Someone who has a mental disorder may be seen as insane, though most professionals prefer to call them psychosis or psychotic episodes, though the lay person is far more blunt in that regard.  Some work on the insanity defense to get out of some measure of punishment for criminal acts, sometimes legitimate, though often not.  The best definition for insanity that I've heard, however, is often attributed to Albert Einstein:  "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  Now, this quotation may in fact have an earlier origin, which was itself quoted by Einstein, or misattributed to him as having said, but the point remains, it sufficiently summarizes the issue of those that are insane.  I regularly get people calling my work looking for a particular product that either we do not carry whatsoever, or that we are out of stock on and have no truck to unload that day.  These people will sometimes call on products we do not carry several times in the same week or even in the same day, and even more insipid are those that have been told we do carry something but that it would be best to call back in two days as we don't have a truck to unload that day.  These people are insane, and some exhibit other signs of their insanity in a manner that has been medically diagnosed already.  Most, however, seem to think either they are being lied to, or that perhaps it will change if they keep calling.  The difference between ignorance and insanity, dear readers, is up to you and I.  Do we learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others, or do we continue an unending cycle?

This revamped blog will be my journey over a multitude of subjects dissecting these things and showing which they exhibit, and how one may rectify either situation.  Until next time, catch you all on the flipside.