We convince ourselves that even our shameless waste, our unchecked consumption and our appalling ignorance of anyplace in the world except our own little corner must continue--or they win! No, when you become smarter and less gluttonous, you win. We all win!
Bill MaherTags: politics america ignorance waste consumption war-on-terror
I hate stupidity, but what I hate even more is when people actually brag about it.
Bill MaherTags: humor stupidity ignorance pride
But what is it that drives haters crazy with rage? Many times, it's being ignored. To a person with pride, being ignored is often worse than out-and-out hate; it's that much more of an insult, that you're not even worth noticing.
Bill MaherTags: politics hate ignorance pride extremism insulting
They" hate us because they feel--and "they" are not wrong--that it is within our power to do so much more, and that we practice a kind of passive-aggressive violence on the Third World. We do this by, for example, demonizing tobacco as poison here while promoting cigarettes in Asia; inflating produce prices by paying farmers not to grow food as millions go hungry worldwide; skimping on quality and then imposing tariffs on foreign products made better or cheaper than our own; padding corporate profits through Third World sweatshops; letting drug companies stand by as millions die of AIDS in Africa to keep prices up on lifesaving drugs; and on and on.
We do, upon reaching a very high comfort level, mostly choose to go from ten to eleven instead of helping another guy far away go from zero to one.
We even do it in our own country. Barbara Ehrenreich's brilliant book Nickel and Dimed describes the impossibility of living with dignity or comfort as one of the millions of minimum-wage workers in fast food, aisle-stocking and table-waiting jobs. Their labor for next to nothing ensures that well-off people can be a little more pampered.
So if we do it to our own, what chance do foreigners have?
Tags: hate suffering ignorance violence poverty charity irresponsible extremism third-world passive-aggressive poverty-and-politics
Not doing anything is doing something and choosing to look away is a passive but no less mortal sin.
Bill MaherTags: suffering ignorance sin passive-aggressive doing-nothing
Sticking one's head in the sand is a deep human impulse. Like when you feel some kind of bump or growth on the back of your neck, and your heart jumps, because, Christ, that could be something bad, I should see a doctor right away. But then you don't, because it's too scary, and what if they do find something, and...and besides: maybe it will just go away!
Bill MaherI don't respect thinking that is dangerous, prejudicial, childish, and could get me killed.
Bill MaherReligion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him in ignorance of his real duties and true interests. It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of Religion, that we shall discover Truth, Reason, and Morality. Religion diverts us from the causes of evils, and from the remedies which nature prescribes; far from curing, it only aggravates, multiplies, and perpetuates them.
Paul-Henri ThiryTags: truth reason morality nature atheism darkness ignorance phantom-of-religion
If the ignorance of nature gave birth to such a variety of gods, the knowledge of this nature is calculated to destroy them.
Paul-Henri ThiryTags: knowledge nature atheism ignorance atheist destruction gods god-of-the-gaps
Ignorance is not a capital crime. It is a correctable condition.
Laura Knight-JadczykTags: ignorance
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