Everyday Canvas

Willful Blindness

Prompt: Willful Blindness: The concept of “willful blindness” comes from the legislature passed in the 19th century —that you’re responsible for the damage to you or to someone else, “if you could have known and should have known, something [that] instead you strove not to see.” What are your thoughts on this or has willful blindness ever taken you under its power?

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Willful blindness happens, according to the 19th century legislature, “if you could have known and should have known,” but looked the other way or ---according to me—willful blindness sometimes happens because of psychological reasons when your mind altered or made light of the facts and you subconsciously skipped over the truth without wanting to.

The type of willful blindness in the 19th-century legislature is inexcusable, and I think it should pass as some kind of a crime or misdemeanor if it isn’t already so. There is no excuse for not acknowledging the wrongdoing if one consciously knows about it.

As to the second type willful blindness that happens with psychological reasons and subconsciously, I assume most of us have been guilty of it at one time or another. This starts at a very young age when we regard our parents as a supreme authority and we get the idea that nothing they do or say or make us do can be wrong. Then this behavior repeats itself in later adult life with the ones we love and build attachments to. We always find good reasons for the misbehavior of those close to us even when we are able to see their errors as errors. It takes a very astute person to not fall into this trap, and I think such people are very rare.

Of the second type of willful—should I say, stupid--blindness, I am guilty to the nth degree, as when I look back I see how gullible I have been, which goes to say, I am probably as gullible, still. Having lived many years doesn’t erase any gullibility, but at least, it makes one think, at each step, if one is repeating the errors of his or her past. I hope I am better at this now, because of experience, but still, I can’t guarantee it for sure.