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May 19 , 2004 - Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels March 16, 2004 Trying ignorance Most of us probably recall seeing bumper-stickers on beat-up old cars of underpaid teachers that read, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." Well, it should be pretty clear here in Oregon, as well as in most of the country, that we do indeed think education is too expensive, and we're trying ignorance. And not just trying it, but wallowing in it. How deeply are we wallowing? One of the best indicators of just how deep is to examine the power of advertising over our behavior. The advertising industry, it hardly needs saying, feeds on the ignorant. You're not going to find their lobbyists fighting for higher educational standards or for increases in education budgets. The ideal raw material for the success of advertising is ignorance, and plenty of it. The more muddle-headed their audience, the more impressionable, dumbed-down, confused, and insecure, the greater their profits. Without the skills of critical thinking, rational analysis, and healthy skepticism which protect the educated, the ignorant are left unprotected, naked to the 24/7 blitz of deceptive commercials. Consider just a few glaring examples all around us of the effects of mass ignorance, much of it driven by advertising: We're wallowing in ignorance big-time in our diets, pigging-out on highly-advertised, fat, salt and sugar-laden junk food, resulting in obesity on a grand scale, robbing millions of their health and happiness and adding billions to our medical costs. We've taken our ignorance on the road, elevating ourselves in massive, gas-guzzling, polluting, dangerous, expensive, road-clogging SUVs. Rejecting more rational forms of transport, we prefer wasteful, showy, ego-massaging vehicles, inflaming our insatiable lust for oil at the expense of the environment and even of the blood of our children in foreign wars. And worst of all, our ignorance is costing us our democracy when it transforms elections into sleazy auctions among millionaires, giving us, instead of democracy, spectacles of sold-out corporate candidates presided over by corporate media-whores in choosing the biggest liar. Ignorance is costing us our democracy when it's bored with (or can't recognize) competence and vision, and drools after celebrities including second-rate actors, wrestlers, weight-lifters. Too bad King Kong is fictional and dated, for he could surely be a strong electoral contender in the current political circus. It doesn't require a lot of calculation to realize just how incredibly expensive ignorance has become to our health, our environment, our politics, and in general, our social fabric. Beyond doubt, an educated citizenry would insist upon arranging things differently, beginning with practicing the great economy of educating its young. Isaac Walker Ashland DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams