Knowledge v. Ignorance | Teen Ink

Knowledge v. Ignorance

April 30, 2010
By agtha.shellen SILVER, Clifton, New Jersey
agtha.shellen SILVER, Clifton, New Jersey
6 articles 0 photos 15 comments

Favorite Quote:
Don&#039;t walk in front of me, I may not follow; Don&#039;t walk behind me, I may not lead; Walk beside me, and just be my friend.<br /> Albert Camus <br /> A mere friend will agree with you, but a real friend will argue.<br /> Russian Proverb


Is It Possible to Be Ignorant with Today’s
Advanced Technology???


Me:
All this homework is making me sick. I’ll just go and check my email for five minutes. Its all junk mail and boring forwards. Hey, I never heard from that friend in a long time. This email she sent is a forward, but it sounds really interesting. It won’t hurt to read it. The main problem of our generation is the gaining lack of knowledge???!!

Alter Ego:
What’s that supposed to mean? That does not make any sense. How can our generation be ignorant, if we have more access to information than any of the generations before us?

Me:
Maybe our lack of knowledge doesn’t have to do with our access to it. Maybe we are an ignorant generation because we don’t want to access this information and be connected to the world. We would rather be on our iPods and updating our Face book status every two and a half minutes. That’s a logical reason, because we are always bombarded by these ads and the new iPods, laptops, and cell phones that come out that we start caring more about them than about children who are being killed all over the world.

Alter Ego:
Why should we care? They’re not a distant relatives.

Me:
I noticed that the only time we start to care is once it starts to affect us.

Alter Ego:
As long as we’re in this bubble, protected, why should we CARE!?!

Me:
The most active people in finding a cure or donating money, or even helping other kids with Cancer are those affected by cancer. And when you see a commercial for cancer they tell you a sad story of a poor child attacked by cancer to get you to donate and some of us still don’t donate. But that could be just one face of the problem. Another could be that we do read the news paper in the morning and hear the CNN on the way to school or work but what’s going to assure me that the news I’m receiving is reliable and isn’t being censored? Did we really think of that?? That we’re only getting one side of the story, the side that the government wants us to know. So maybe that guy in Afghanistan that attacked a CSI post had a motive for it. Why would anyone, even a person who is not in the right mind, attack a CSI post with out having a motive behind it?? Why would he risk his life for it?? All you read or hear is that he attacked a CSI post; therefore he is a radical and should be sent to jail and punished. He should be punished because there are other means to express your views but did we ever inquire why he would do such a thing?

Alter Ego:
But then again, why should we care??

Me:
We still have our iPods’ and our FM blasting from the speakers in our cars. The world is still safe!! But wait! Maybe we abuse our use of technology. We can benefit a lot from computers and cell phones, but we use them only to be happy that the whole world knows you and your family is having dinner at Red Lobster because you just posted it on twitter. We can use all of those technologies like Face Book and twitter to inform people of the catastrophes going on around the world. Of the kids dying from starvation in Somalia or the innocent children killed on their way to school in Palestine.

Alter Ego:
Why should we care??

Me:
They’re not any relatives of mine,

Alter Ego:
Why should I care?

Me:
Even though we might have all of these technologies, taking total control of our lives, and of the means to keep us connected to the world, and be informed and updated, we are still being kept from specific information the government does not desire us to know about. Our lack of knowledge is connected to government censorship, and to our lack of interest. Maybe if we wanted to know, and strived to discover the censored information, it would not be censored. At the end, ignorance and technology go hand in hand. But the main reason for our generation’s problem, which is our ignorance, is our lack of INTEREST. If we lose it, we lose our main problem, like BANG, and our lack of knowledge is gone!



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