What is ignorance?

In answer to Quora question "What is ignorance?"

I don't know.

No but seriously: ignorance is both the condition of not knowing, and I think also the inability to recognize this condition in ourselves, and further the deleterious impact on choices and patterns of though, emotion and behavior that such ignorance causes. All of this seems bound up in ignorance. There is a further extreme in which a person forcefully maintains ignorance in the face of knowledge and understanding - a *willful *ignorance. The most profound sort of ignorance seems to fall into this category. And when this willful condition is sustained for long periods, it slowly develops a sort of self-protective arrogance, so that the worldview nurtured by profound ignorance becomes a matter of egotistical pride. So there seems to be a progression here, from simply being naive and without comprehension, to being hardened and resistant to resolving those conditions in oneself, to the adamant trumpeting of clueless egotism. It is almost as if ignorance itself is a living thing...a slothful little demon that relishes the pain of making the same mistakes over and over again. And that demon has a name, I think: The Idiot.

My 2 cents.

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