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Other Colours by Orhan Pamuk

“Societies, tribes, and peoples grow more intelligent, richer, and more advanced as they pay attention to the troubled words of their authors, and, as we all know, the burning of books and the denigration of writers are both signals that dark and improvident times are upon us”. Orhan Pamuk

“So the notice is there to remind him that, while some people pass through this door, others cannot. Which means the NO ENTRY sign is a lie. Actually, what it should say is NOT EVERYONE WHO WANTS TO ENTER  IS ALLOWED TO DO SO. By implying that certain privileged people can pass through, all those who do not possess the requisite privileges are barred, even if they wish to enter. At the same time it accords to those who have no wish to enter the same fate as those who do.” Orhan Pamuk

“…. to be happy is not rude, and it takes brains.” Orhan Pamuk

“One day I’ll write a book that’s made only from fragments too.” Orhan Pamuk

Today’s post is about a book I’ve been reading by the Turkish writer and Nobel Prize winner for literature, Orhan Pamuk, Other Colours (2007), and some recent, accompanying artwork.

Pamuk enjoys a significant readership in Greece, and many of his books have been translated and critically acclaimed here, but as far as I can recall I don’t seem to have read any of his works, even though I did find a copy of a Greek edition of Snow on my shelves recently. I had purchased it in 2007, but apparently I’d never got round to reading it and then I forgot about it.

Other Colours is an abundant collection of 76 non-fiction pieces written over decades, as well as, some photos of Ottoman miniaturists’ art and the writer’s illustrations. The book is structured into nine sections, each exploring different facets of the writer’s thoughts on a broad range of topics. Pamuk notes: “…this book is shaped as a sequence of autobiographical fragments, moments, and thoughts,” and elsewhere, “I gathered up these pieces to form a totally new book with an autobiographical center.” He reflects on almost everything, with melancholy, nostalgia, irony, and a lot of humour, and manages to weave, memories, ideas, dreams, buildings and places, history and politics, human rights and censorship, self and identity, personal joy and public tragedy, natural and social disasters, family and the fragility of life, Eastern and Western art, his early resolutions to become a painter, the reason he didn’t become an architect, his experience of being a novelist, his own artistic process,  his novels, literature and literary figures, and more, into a coherent narrative.

On literature he comments: “Over time, I have come to see the work of literature less as narrating the world than “seeing the world with words.” From the moment he begins to use words like colors in a painting, a writer can begin to see how wondrous and surprising the world is, and he breaks the bones of language to find his own voice. For this he needs paper, a pen, and the optimism of a child looking at the world for the first time.” As for what it is like being a novelist he tells us: “When a novelist begins to play with the rules that govern society, when he digs beneath the surface to discover its hidden geometry, when he explores that secret world like a curious child, driven by emotions he cannot quite understand, it is inevitable that he will cause his family, his friends, his peers, and his fellow citizens some unease. But this is a happy unease. For it is by reading novels, stories, and myths that we come to understand the ideas that govern the world in which we live; it is fiction that gives us access to the truths kept veiled by our families, our schools, and our society; it is the art of the novel that allows us to ask who we really are.”

The book includes critical essays of the works of many literary figures, such as, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Hugo, Nabokov, Camus, Salman Rushdie, Sterne, Coleridge, Virginia Woolf, Faulkner, Mann, Hemingway, Proust, Borges, Kafka, Dostoyevsky, with whom he finds he shares an affinity, and many more from different countries and cultures. Pamuk sheds light on Dostoyevsky, the man, his era and the contradictions of those who live, as he writes, on the edge of Europe. He claims that to understand the secrets that Dostoyevsky’s book, Notes from Underground, “whispers to those who, like me, live on the edge of Europe, quarreling with European thought, we need to look at the years during which Dostoyevsky was writing this strange novel.” He adds that even though Dostoyevsky had begun to feel anger toward the Western intellectuals who looked down on Russia, he was still a product of his Western education and upbringing and still practising a Western art, the art of the novel.

He goes on to tell us that he has a vivid memory of reading The Brothers Karamazov at the age of eighteen, alone in his room in a house that looked out on the Bosphorus. I also read some of Dostoyevsky’s works, including this lengthy book, when I was 16 and 17. Unlike Pamuk though, I didn’t return to the book in adulthood and so it inevitably became a distant memory. If we don’t return to books, the stories, characters and ideas we at one point engaged with often become faded memories. However, even though we may forget the stories, other things remain, like how the book made us feel, the actual physical object, the context we read it in, our response to its ideas at the time, and maybe other peoples’ responses, too. Ultimately, all the books we have read make us who we are. They reduce our childhood innocence and show us how the world works. Pamuk observes that unlike Proust’s hero, he never assumed the identities of characters in books or believed these events were happening to him, but he did enjoy the excitement of entering a space altogether different from his everyday world. He liked to study “the interior world of the novel in much the same way as [he] once studied the liquid inside [his] soft-drink bottle.”

In his essays we witness the pleasure he derives from reading, but also his need to recycle and dispose of books. He says: “Because I live in a country almost devoid of books and libraries, I at least have an excuse. The twelve thousand books in my library are what compel me to take my work seriously……,” and explains that “an easy way to clear them out is to decide which books we’d prefer to, shall we say, hide or banish altogether, so that our friends won’t see them at all. We can throw large numbers of books away just so no one will know you ever took such nonsense seriously.” He also reflects on themes like his belief in literature’s power to question life’s intrinsic nature and the process of creating meaning, as well as, the diminishing number of readers in Turkey. Concerning the low numbers of readers in his coutry he comments: “Still, I live in a country that views the nonreader as the norm and the reader as somehow defective, so I cannot but respect the affectations, obsessions, and pretensions of the tiny handful that read and build libraries amid the general tedium and boorishness.”

Through this narrative, composed of many fragments, Pamuk succeeds in revealing how personal and creative lives are inextricably linked. He doesn’t shy away from emotions and intimate experiences. He writes lovingly of his daughter. Parents, relatives and friends walk through his pages. He writes about his childhood, school experiences and early events to understand how they have shaped him and to make links between events and his stories and characters: “When I was little, a boy the same age as I—his name was Hasan—hit me just under the eye with a stone from his slingshot. Years later, when another Hasan asked me why all the Hasans in my novels were evil, this memory returned to me” or “Because I came to love horses during my childhood summers on Heybeliada, I’ve always given very good parts to horses and their carriages. My horse heroes are sensitive, delicate, forlorn, innocent, and often the victims of evil.”

He remembers his father, who despite his frequent long absences suffused him with the confidence to pursue his dreams: “When I was a child my father would look with heartfelt admiration at every picture I drew; when I asked his opinion, he would examine every scribbled sentence as if it were a masterpiece; he would laugh uproariously at my most tasteless and insipid jokes. Without the confidence he gave me, it would have been much more difficult to become a writer, to choose this as my profession. His trust in us, and his easy way of convincing my brother and me that we were brilliant and unique, came from a confidence in his own intellect,” and elsewhere, “Much later, when I’d put all that behind me, when anger and jealousy no longer clouded my view of the father who had never scolded me, never tried to break me, I slowly came to see—and to accept—the many and inescapable similarities between us.”

Pamuk explores his deep need to sit in solitude to dream, read and write. He gives us a glimpse of the workings of his creative mind and vivid imagination, and the thoughts he usually doesn’t talk about with others, concerning the objects that surround him, a sad, small tricycle or a beloved wristwatch, for instance. One such story is about an ashtray. I remember similar ashtrays in the shape of fish, shells or cupped hands from my own childhood. He writes: “Someone made a porcelain ashtray in the shape of a fish, and the poor fish will be burned by cigarettes for years on end, its mouth opened wide enough so that it’s not just dirty ashes it will have to swallow; its mouth is big enough to accommodate butts, matches, and all manner of filth.” Sometimes the author speaks to us through the voice of inanimate things like the figures in a drawing. These designs on paper tell us: “We are troubled by the abundance of rumors about where we come from, who we are, where we’re going…… after centuries of wandering, defeat, and disaster, our stories are lost. The drawings that once illustrated these stories have been scattered across the world. Now even we have forgotten where we are from. We have been stripped of our stories and our identities.”

Animals are also present in these essays and stories. Pamuk’s stories involve horses, seagulls, swallows and packs of stray dogs roaming the streets of Istanbul. For instance, he writes: “Revenge breeds revenge. Two years ago, when eight or nine dogs cornered and attacked me in Maçka Park, it seemed as if they had read my books and knew I had exacted poetic justice on them to punish them for roaming, especially in Istanbul, in packs. This, then, is the danger in poetic justice: Taken too far, it might ruin not just your book—your work—but your very life.”

In the part of the book with the title: My Books Are My Life he offers us insights into some of his novels and provides backstories, personal reflections on his books, and the emotional resonance he finds in his characters’ vulnerabilities. For instance, he draws on the material he gathered during his visits to Kars, the setting of Snow, to provide details of the the beauty, the sociopolitical landscape, and the loneliness and isolation that the city evoked in him. He notes: “If there is a silence, a dullness, a strange sense of calm, it is because the streets are full of people who have made peace with misery and helplessness; the state has banned all other possibilities, and done so with some violence.”

The book includes pieces about the 1999 earthquake that killed 30,000 people in a matter of seconds, and the general earthquake angst it generated. He writes about the lived experience, the fear, the destruction, the loss of lives, the Turkish mentality and the reasons so many buildings collapsed like a tower of deck cards. He comments: “…the death toll of thirty thousand had laid bare the construction sector’s practice of building shoddily on poor soil without any effort at earthquake proofing. For the twenty million living in the environs of the city, nightmares sprang from the well-founded fear that their homes would be unable to withstand an earthquake of the intensity that the scientists had now forecast……. very slowly the millions of İstanbullus living in unsound buildings on unsound soil have come to understand that they have to find their own way of fending off terror. This was how some came to leave the matter to Allah or, with time, simply to forget it, while others now take false comfort in precautions they adopted after the previous earthquake.”

He devotes pages to his beloved Istanbul, its neigbourhoods and buildings and the dramatic changes it has undergone. Pamuk says that the history of Istanbul is the history of fires and ruins from the middle of the 16th century, when the building of wooden houses became popular, until the early 20th century. Fires, he explains, opened up its avenues and streets and shaped the city. He writes: “In those days it was against the law to knock down your old home to make room for the new apartment building……. people would move out, and once the mansion had become uninhabitable due to neglect, rotting wood, and age you could get permission to tear it down. Some would try to speed up the process by pulling out tiles to let in the rain and the snow. A faster, bolder option was to burn it down one night when no one was looking.” Part of the change happened to accommodate the rapidly growing population that went from one to ten million [today it’s about 16 million, the most populous city in Europe and larger than many countries, including Greece] in a very short space of time: “if you were to view it from above you would see at once why all this family strife, this greed, guilt, and remorse, served no good purpose. Below you would see the concrete legions, as great and unstoppable as the army in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, as they roll over all mansions, trees, gardens, and wildlife in their way; you see the tracks of asphalt that this force leaves in its wake…”

The writer shares his time between Istanbul and the Princes Islands. It was his essys about the islands and the Bosphorus that transported me back, as if little had changed since our visit, decades ago. Pamuk’s stories and descriptions brought back memories of a long ago trip I took to Turkey in the 80s when Isatnbul’s population was the quarter of what it is today. Even though one can safely assume that a lot of dramatic changes have taken place over these decades the book seems to have narrowed the distance of time. I visited Turkey in my twenties, with my husband and my sister. The experience left an indelible imprint on me. I had found the people friendly, hospitable, chatty and curious about people from other places. I was also young and much more open to interactions with strangers. We had a meal in a small tavern full of men [what we would call κουτούκι / koutouki in Greece, which actually derives from the Turkish word “kütük” that means tree trunk and is also used to describe someone drunk], we ate local sweets at cafes, or drank tea in small glasses on the boats we took to visit places outside Istanbul, and exchanged views about women, feminism, identity, and other such topics, with a variety of people we didn’t know or would ever see again… On the Bosphorus I was invited to teach English there by an older English lady that had made Istanbul her home, and although I was aware of the alure of the city, I could also sense the lack of freedom. The armed guards on every street corner reinforced the feeling.

When we visited it was apparent that the grand days belonged to the past, many houses were deserted or dilapidated, and yet, past more glorious days could be inferred. Like many islands across the world in earlier days, they were places of exile, initially, for defeated Byzantine emperors and politicians and apart from the prisons, monasteries and monks, vineyards and small fishing villages, they were empty places. However, Pamuk tells us that from the beginning of the 19th century, the islands began to serve as summer resorts for Istanbul’s Christians and Levantines, Greeks and Jews, those connected to various embassies, and a little later, the city’s upper middle classes that began taking excursions to and building summer homes on the islands.

There are also references to Istanbul street food, [which I didn’t sample, because I’m a bit cautious in consuming food or water that might make me sick when I’m traveling], and the shift that quitting smoking brought to his sense of self. He says: “I no longer feel the chemical craving of the early days. I just miss my old self, the way I might miss a dear friend, a face; all I want is to return to the man I once was……When I long to return to my old self, I remember that in those days I had vague intimations of immortality.”  He also writes about his travels and stays in other countires, passports, and national identity. He notes: “It is when national difference is not a cause for celebration that a terrible variety emerges. It is the same with our passports, which sometimes bring us joy and sometimes sadness: As for the miserable ways they cause us to question our identity, no two are alike.”

In the section with the title Politics, Europe, and Other Problems of Being Oneself, he ponders on the complex interplay between cultural identity and political expression, the legal turmoil he faced in Turkey for acknowledging the Armenian genocide and the killing of 30,000 Kurds, the fraught relationship between personal belief and national law, life on the periphery, and the conflicts he has experienced as a secular, Westernized Turk. He discusses the issue of East and West, which he sees as a real and a mafactured chasm between East and West, with potentially dire consequences. He reflects on the cultural tensions between Eastern and Western experienced by Muslims all over the world, pointing to poverty, deprivation, and cultural and political factors rather than religious motivations concerning terrorism and the rise of fundamentalism and nationalism. He notes: “Today, as I listen to people all over the world calling for the East to go to war with the West, I fear that we will soon see much of the world going the way of Turkey, which has endured almost continuous martial law. I fear that the self-congratulatory, self-righteous West will drive the rest of the world down the path of Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man, to proclaim that two plus two equals five. Nothing nurtures support for the “Islamist” throwing nitric acid in the faces of women more than the West’s refusal to understand the anger of the damned.”

Pamuk speaks up against censorship, and writes about freedom of thought, his court case, the many prohibitions of Turkish society, politics, democracy, human rights, culture, religion, poverty, immigration. He traces the tendency for censorship and oppression and comments: “Here we might draw a parallel with something else I’ve seen often in my own lifetime: the modern Republic’s predilection for shutting down newspapers………. this sort of thing dates back to the 1870s, when Sultan Abdülhamit undertook to control the opposition by buying up its publications—a tradition that in a subtler way continues to this day.” Elsewhere, while describing Harold Pinter amd Arthur Miller’s visit to Turkey on account of the ruthless limits being set on freedom of expression he writes in1980 there had been a coup in Turkey and hundreds of thousands were thrown into prison, and writers were persecuted the most vigorously. Until then he himself had mostly stood on the margins of the political world, but listening to the suffocating tales of repression, cruelty, and outright evil, he had felt drawn in both by guilt and solidarity, while also feeling a desire to protect himself.

Throughout the book Pamuk highlights the significance of always focusing on the importance of respecting human rights and freedom of expression, which he believes is linked with human dignity. He comments: “But to respect the human rights of minorities, and to respect their humanity, is not to suggest that we should accommodate all manner of belief or tolerate those who attack or seek to limit freedom of thought in deference to the moral codes of those minorities. Some of us have a better understanding of the West, some of us have more affection for those who live in the East, and some, like me, try to do the two things at the same time, but these attachments, this desire to understand, should never stand in the way of our respect for human rights.”

It is not possible for me to do justice to the thematic diversity and depth of this undoubtedly interesting book, independently of whether one agrees with all the ideas contained in the book. There is for instance, a piece about diaries, his own first diary, a gift from his mother, and the vogue among Turkish writers of keeping a diary and publishing it while still alive, and he reflects on traffic anarchy and religion or politics and accidents. In one chapter he refers to one of Atatürk’s first reforms that concerned the statutory adoption of Western dress in 1925. Although it obliged everyone to dress like a European, it was still a continuation of the traditionally regimented Ottoman dress code that required everyone to dress according to religious affiliation, and which resulted, he notes, in the Turkish police still chasing people going about the conservative neighborhoods of Istanbul in traditional dress, seventy years after Atatürk’s dress revolution.

In the last two pieces he writes about his mother and father. The book ends with his 2006 Nobel speech with the title, My Father’s Suitcase, perhaps the most moving piece in the book. He wishes his father were there with him and says: “I had no fear of my father, and I had sometimes believed very deeply that I had been able to become a writer because my father had, in his youth, wished to be one too.”

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.Ignorance   /  ΄Αγνοια                                                                 Edited: June 10th, 2025

“If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be.” Thomas Jefferson

“The main scourge of humanity is not ignorance, because the ignorant often have excuses, but the refusal to know.” Simone de Beauvoir

“You will search the world over and not find a non-superstitious community. As long as there is ignorance, there will be adherence to superstition. Dispelling ignorance is the only solution….” From The Spinoza Problem by Irvin D. Yalom,

“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding…… Albert Camus

Today’s post is about ignorance and Peter Burke’s book, Ignorance: A Global History (2023). Peter Burke is a British polymath, historian, professor and writer.

Burke begins by telling us that in the past the ignorance of individuals was due to the fact that too little information was circulating in societies, and some knowledge was ‘precarious’ and hidden away because the authorities in both church and state rejected it. On the other hand, today it is abundance that has become a problem. This he says is known as ‘information overload’. People experience a deluge of information and are often unable to select what is useful and of value, which is described as ‘filter failure’. Therefore, he writes: “our so-called ‘information age’ enables the spread of ignorance just as much,” and so even though collectively, we know more than ever before, individually, we do not know more than our predecessors.

Burke believes that we need to think of knowledges and ignorances in the plural, and he discusses the necessity of ignorance in helping us shape our sense of what it means to know, the fact that knowing is not only passive, but also selective and active, and that ignoring facilitates our acquiring new knowledge, given the limits of our time and attention, and our individual and collective capacity to understand. We also need to decide what to keep, promote or discard. For instance, libraries and archives are the technologies by which we produce both knowledge and ignorance, hopefully, in a wise and judicious manner.

In the course of Burke’s exploration we encounter diverse, conflicting or / and complementary views around ignorance: Kant’s motto “Dare to know” as a reaction to forces that viewed curiosity and seeking knowkedge as a mortal sin, botanist Bernardin Saint-Pierre’s praise of ignorance on the grounds that it stimulates the imagination.  Philosopher John Rawl argued in favour of the ‘veil of ignorance’, a blindness to race, class, nation and gender that helps us see other people as morally equal beings. The term ‘virtuous’ ignorance has been used to describe the renunciation of research on nuclear weapons. Another kind of virtuous ignorance is the confidentiality and respect for privacy expected from doctors and other professionls, and democracy is protected by the secrecy of ballots, and so on. However, Burke concludes that the examples discussed in this book suggest that the negative consequences of ignorance generally outweigh the positive ones.

The book is divideδ into two basic parts. At the outset of his book Burke provides some beliefs and theories about ignorance and identifies the methodological problem of studying ignorance. In the first part he traces nearly every area of human activity and knowledge, mostly European, but not entirely, because as he explains that’s what he knows best, unified by the theme of what is not known / ignorance. Burke explores specialized fields like philosophy, religion, history, geography, natural sciences and the field of medicine. He makes his points through a plethora of historical examples and exploratory questions:

Who is ignorant of What, When, Where and with What Consequences? Who wants Whom not to know What and for What Reasons? Who has the power (the opportunities and the resources) to do this and what are the consequences of their actions? Or Who leaked What to Whom…..for What Purposes and with What Consequences?

At the end of the book Burke has provided a non exhaustive long list of types of ignorance. For instance he defines agnoiology, which is the study of ignorance, and agnotology, which is the study of the production of ignorance.  He explains that many forms of agnotology derive from social criticism, and the fact that ignorance can result from the operations of power, inequality, and prejudice. Studies have been conducted on the deliberate social production and maintenance of ignorance in our time. He explores the social forces that produce ignorance and the campaigns launched by industry and government to disinform the public, and further adds, that those with power often lack the knowledges they need, while those who possess those knowledges lack power. He explores public ignorance and claims that the absence or deprivation’ of knowledge, often invisible to the ignorant individual or group, is a form of blindness that has massive consequences. This is true both in our personal lives and the public arena since ignorance and secrets can often function as means of control and manipulation.

Examples are provided in relation to how ignorance runs through every historian’s work. Burke writes: “On the map of the past, there are many blank spaces.”  In relation to historiography he examines various aspects and problems, such as, bias and lack of evidence, the reliability of sources, the problem of standpoints, the need for critical thought and discernment of myths from true events. He describes the various phases it has gone through from the necessity for radical doubt to the discovery of the ‘selective ignorance’ and the realization that history has been written for the most part by elites, about elites and for elites. Burke writes the 20th century focused on political events from the perspective of the leaders, but this kind of history was rejected by economic historians, who focused on structures and trends rather than events or individuals. Later social historians rejected economic history as reductionist, and in the1960s, history from below, focused on ordinary people, the ruled rather than the rulers, including the writers’ point of view, their lives and sufferings. He also attends closely to women’s past exclusion from scholarly professions, which had until recently led to ignorance of women’s social and cultural contributions. This reality has to some extent and in some places been partly remedied through the influence of feminist historians.

Burke goes on to discuss how ignorance plays various roles in both the theory and the practice of religion, and notes that “religion itself might be described as a response to human ignorance.” Historically, he adds, ignorance has been imputed to others, and others’ beliefs are often treated as an absence of knowledge rather than a different or rival knowledge. Agnostics [a Greek term meaning lack of spiritual knowledge], following the example of Socrates, impute ignorance to themselves. He also refers to the ignorance of the doctrines of people’s own religion on the part of both the clergy and the laity. At some point in history due to the immense ignorance of the lower clergy Lutheran and Calvinist pastors, for instance, were expected to have studied at university. He discusses the ignorance of Europeans about the peoples and places they conquered, and adds, that what has been discussed less than the ignorance of the laity is the reciprocal ignorance of the three groups involved in this process: the local or indigenous people, the missionaries in the field [although in the 20th century, there was a shift and many missionaries might be described as amateur anthropologists], and their superiors at their desks at home [organizational ignorance].

Burke highlights the fact that in the absence of reliable knowledge, humans are prone to constructing stories to fill in the gaps, and while ignorance about the religion of others is often coupled with contempt, it has also, in different historical contexts lead to the spread of rumours. However, the circulation of rumours can solidify into long-lasting myths, beliefs or stereotypes about other groups or other religions leading to accusations and hostility.  Across eras rumours and false accusations have been used to legitimize violence, wars or pogroms against particular individuals and groups.

Finally, he traces the most important shifts in religious knowledge / ignorance over the centuries. In medieval Christendom, many had faith, but few knew much about their religion. From 1500 to 1900 there were movements of evangelization both in the Christian and in the Muslim worlds. And although since 1900 religious knowledge has more widely available than ever before, it has come to have a low priority, and more and more people, in the West mostly, choose to be ignorant of religion, in contrast to what is happening in the Islamic world, where a religious reformation began spreading widely in the later twentieth century.

In chapter seven Burke tells us that some of the most important studies of the history of ignorance have focused on the natural sciences. He quotes many thinkers to assert this point. The British physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, wrote that “Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.” More recently, in 2004, in his Nobel Prize speech, the American theoretical physicist David Gross said: “The questions we ask today are more profound and more interesting than those asked years ago when I was a student . . . back then we did not possess enough knowledge to be intelligently ignorant . . . I am happy to report that there is no evidence that we are running out of our most important resource – ignorance.”

Ignorance associated with science can be studied in relation to the history of science; its place in new research; the management of ignorance; resistance to new knowledge by both scientists and the laity; the ignorance of the laity, the loss of knowledge, and more. Scientists inevitably practise a ‘selective’ or ‘specified’ ignorance: the deliberate ignoring of some of the data in order to concentrate on a particular problem. Burke mentions that the neuroscientist Larry Abbott has talked about the importance of choosing ‘precisely where along the frontier of ignorance I want [he wants] to work’. He also refers to the medical field, which is a field in which ignorance was actually studied relatively early. He briefly touches upon how vast ignorance is in this field, and the reasons for this: the constant new knowledge and discoveries concerning illnesses, causes, remedies and diagnostic tools, physicians’ work overload, or disinterest in acquiring new information and invested interests.

Ignorance can be intentional and wilful, in other words not wanting to know, an‘active’ ignorance in the sense of resistance to certain ideas, especially new ones. Frequently, members of an older generation are unwilling to abandon theories in which they have invested their professional capital. One example in the book is that of a few well-known scientists, in the 1980s and 1990s, who cast doubt in public on what was becoming the scientific consensus about four threats to life and health in particular: the link between smoking and cancer, the problem of acid rain, the depletion of the ozone layer, and the trend towards global warming. Their wilful ignorance was not the healthy and necessary initial scepticism of new discoveries or theories, but the consistent ignorance of information that pointed to what they did not want to know. They were all politically conservative with links to industry and government.

Two other aspects of willful ignorance are: what he refers to as the chronic lack of funding the humanities [undone social science], and the collective ignoring of problems and areas of research that are left unfunded [undone science]. Burkes says this ‘systematic non production of knowledge’ illustrates the politics of science, the competition between groups with different agendas (government, industry, NGOs, foundations, universities, and so on). Ignorance can also be the result of loss of knowledge, a kind of collective amnesia. Burke provides examples, a classic case being Greek science (including mathematics), lost to western Europeans in the early Middle Ages, or the fate of the research on the transmission of hereditary traits in plants carried out by Gregor Mendel, who formulated his principles of transmission in a paper published in 1866. However, the international scientific community paid little notice to, so these discoveries had to be made all over again a generation later by a German biologist and a Dutch botanist.

Finally, Burke traces the shifts in knowledge and ignorance in this field. He writes that there was a movement for the popularization of natural science in the later 18th century, when some leading scientists participated in the spreading of scientific knowledge through lectures and performances that often included demonstrations of experiments carried out in public for lay audiences. He mentions, for instance, T.H. Huxley’s lecture on a piece of chalk to the working men of Norwich in 1868, introducing them to chemistry, geology and palaeontology.  There was some lay resistance to scientific theories, notably Darwin’s theory of evolution; however, Burke claims that despite the resistance to Darwin, the 19th century now appears to have been a golden age for lay knowledge of science, followed by a decline ever since.

More recent forms of popularization are scientific magazines, the dissemination of scientific knowledge via journalism, television programmes and documentaries, and via the Internet. He mentions that today there are gowing groups of citizens, who are mobilizing science in campaigns to defend the environment, to protect wildlife, to warn about the effects of climate change, and so on. However; Burke notes that science is becoming “more inaccessible to the general public than before, so much so that it maybe no exageration to speak of the rapid growth of ignorance in this large domain. This is due to many reasons, like the ever-increasing specialization, the increasing complexity and remoteness of scientific experiments from everyday life, political reasons and the ‘warfare of science with theology.”

There are many aspects through which to explore ignorance of geography, too. Burke begins with the ignorance of outsiders, the colonizers. He claims that the declaration of ignorance about the existence of indigenous peoples was convenient and was probably feigned. He writes: “Whether or not the phrase ‘no one’s land’ was in use, the assumption behind it was certainly current among white settlers from the 16th to the 19th centuries.” He explains that colonists did not want to know about the use of the land before their arrival, by the First Peoples in the Americas, the Maori in New Zealand and Aboriginal groups in Australia. This deliberate unawareness has been described as ‘the conceptual erasure of those societies that had been there before’.

However, there was also true ignorance of geography and many erroneous beliefs about places and cultures, like: the assumption that the earth was flat and square; the belief in medieval Europe that the world was divided into three continents;  the belief of the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy that Scandinavia was an island; the common belief in ancient Greece and Rome that non-human peoples, the ‘Plinian races’ as they are now known could be found in distant parts of the world, stories that would have been a deterrent to travel; the fact that in Sicily, as late as the 1950s, an investigator discovered that some peasants did not know where Russia was, or that Columbus actually re-discovered America because around the year 1000, a Norse explorer, Leif Erikson, had reached part of the North American coast that became known as ‘Vinland’, a knowledge that was eventually lost; the belief that the Amazons, mentioned in the 5th century BCE in the Histories of Herodotus, were declared found by Columbus and other explorers in a variety of places; the myth of El Doarado; the ignorance of the existence of China and its civilization in Europe, and the Chinese ignorance of Europe, and on and on.

Moreover, often travelogues were innacurate and Burke claims that some writers “may have gone too far in the direction of fiction without admitting this to their readers.” Censorship often impacted what information was allowed to circulate or reach other places. Travelling, especially by land, was difficult and dangerous and some countries were officially closed to foreigners by the authorities, for political and religious reasons. For instance, Copernicus was introduced to the Chinese after the  ban on teaching heliocentrism was lifted in 1757, Korea, nicknamed ‘the Hermit Kingdom,’remained almost unknown in the West until it became a protectorate of Japan in 1905, and Mekka and Lhasa, resisted European knowledge and visitors well into the nineteenth century. Even when discoveries were made, often travel accounts were not allowed to be published and maps often remained secret [cartographic silences]. Even in the 20th and 21st centuries, some regimes and corporations have continued the policy of secrecy.

Finally, Burke tells us that in the 21st century ignorance of the earth’s geography has been greatly reduced through exploration and scientific research, “our remaining ignorance and its tragic consequences concern nuclear weapons, pesticides, pollution, the decline of biodiversity, and above all by forecasts of climate change.” He quotes Bill McKibben, who wrote that one reason we mostly ignored the natural world around us is that ‘it has always been there and we presumed it always would’, but the threat of destruction, as a result of industrialization, awakened interest in what was threatened. Global warming and its denial, “has revealed new ignorance about the earth as well as presenting new challenges to all its inhabitants.”

In the second part of the book we read about the consequences of ignorance throughout history and across contexts. We soon become aware of how these can be dangerous, even lethal. Education, says Burke, is essential and less costly. This part of the book contains plethora disastrous forms of ignorance organized by types of human activity: ignorance in war, in business, in politics, and the strategic ignorance involved in industrial and political espionage and conspiracy.

Burke introduces the idea of relative ignorance in relation to war, claiming that “In war, both sides suffer from ignorance. …… The fundamental question whether battles and wars can be won by planning remains controversial.” Stendhal, Tolstoy and Zola, all wrote about the chaos and ignorance concerning war, and probably war is a combination of crass ignorance on many fronts, arrogance and a sense of superiority, deception, planning, adequate supplies and knowledge. He provides many historical examples to support his claims. For instance, he refers to Hitler’s lost touch with reality, the ‘multiple ignorances’ of the Vietnam War from the military to the press to the public, the lies, arrogance and disregard of the Vietnamese resistance to foreign rule and anti-colonialism stance.

In his chapter on ignorance in business, Burke explores ignorance in trade, industry and agriculture, organizational ignorance, advertising, unconscious desires, consumer ignorance and vulnerability, ‘financial illiteracy’ and ‘accounting illiteracy,’ the spreading of false rumours, the ignorance of investors and bursting of bubbles, which in serious cases like the South Sea Bubble in 1920 led to a wave of suicides and the fall of the government in England, clandestine business and the need of feigned ignorance.  Concerning agriculture, for instance, he refers to the ignorance that colonists had of the lands that had been colonized with dire consequences; the frequent campaigns to improve agriculture from above, and the dangers of imposing changes in defiance of local knowledge and the experience of those who worked the land; the aggressive plowing of grasslands or the emphasis on short term self-interest.

Burke begins his chapter on politics and ignorance by saying that Michel Foucault’s work has helped us to understand the relation between power and knowledge more clearly than before, but examining the relationship between power and ignorance is also illuminating. He explores the ignorance of ordinary people, which he claims  is an asset for more or less authoritarian regimes, and an anxiety for more or less democratic states, the ignorance of rulers and politicians, and the organizational ignorance built into the political system, the machinery of government. He also provides examples to explain strategic ignorance. One being that of The American Party that had acquired the name of‘The Know Nothings’ because members were advised to say ‘I know nothing’ when faced with questions about their organization.

He provides examples of views promoting the importance of keeping vast numbers of people uneducated and ignorant held, for instance, by Voltaire, initially, and rulers like Knig Louis XIII and Richelieu, King Frederick VI of Denmark, the Ottoman sultan or oriental despotism, and many more since. Polish journalist R. Kapuscinski’s (cited in the book) wrote in his report on Iran under the rule of the shah that “A dictatorship depends for its existence on the ignorance of the mob; that’s why all dictators take such pains to cultivate that ignorance.” Burke refers to William Lovett, who in the 19th century proposed a reform of education and wrote: “the ignorance of the masses has made them in all ages the slaves of the enlightened and cunning.”

Ignorance and the spreading of rumours create problems both in people’s personal lives and bigger systems like democracies. John Kennedy had said that “the educated citizen knows that . . . only an educated and informed people will be a free people…(ctied in Burke).” Burke refers to ‘rational ignorance’ coined by Anthony Downs to describe those who think that informing themselves about politics is not worth the trouble, and how voters for Donald Trump make a series of choices to avoid knowledge that contradicts their opinions. He refers to what has been termed by philosopher Philip Kitcher ‘vulgar democracy’ described as a ‘tyranny of ignorance’. He gives examples of ‘voter ignorance,’ like, for instance, the widespread ignorance about the effects of Brexit. We could probably find examples of this type of ignorance in every country.

Concerning the rulers’ ignorance, Burke writes that the pre-modern state was, in many crucial respects, partially blind. However, there are plenty of examples of rulers’ ignorance both in the more recent past and in our current era. He writes that even though today most prime ministers have studied economics or social sciences, practised law or have served as ministers, diplomats or mayors, and therefore, have some knowledge of politics, the problem of ignorance arises from the fact that professional training involves specialization, while the job of president or prime minister requires wide-ranging knowledge. He refers to a long list of heads of states, who displayed notorious ignorance of geography, other countries and foreign affairs, and their unwise or detrimental decisions as a result. Burke also discusses “imperial or colonial’ and neo-colonial ignorance, and their often tragic outcomes. The famines in Bengal, Ireland and Africa are examples of this type of ignorance combined with other factors.

Burke explains how many catastrophies often ensue from willful ignorance of business leaders and politicians, like for instance, Presidents Jaοr Bolsonaro or Donald Trump, [who also suffers from ignorance in its acute form, that of not knowing that he does not know], who both refused to respond to the COVID 19 pandemic and are failing to acknowledge or confront climate change. In his chapter on catastrophies he distinguishes between inevitable ignorance of the future & culpable ignorance and lack of preparation. He moves across historical eras to shed light on “too many cases in history of natural disasters striking after dangers had been ignored.” It seems that we repeatedly neglect to prepare or take measures to prevent or reduce the impact of natural disasters. In areas vulnerable to floods or earthquakes lack of preparation is culpable. Burke writes that the more recent natural disaster, Hurricane Katrina, “revealed what might be called the ‘social distribution’ of ignorance,” a recurrent theme in history, when local knowledge is ignored not at one’s own peril, but at the peril of others.

Moreover, we neglect to take measures to prevent catastrophic events like Chernobyl. In 17th and 18th century Northern Europe, even though most houses were constructed of wood, arrangements to fight fires were insufficient, and thus, the burning of whole towns was common. All the great and traumatic famines in history point to the fact that they are both natural and man made disasters, a combination of ignorance, arrogance, indifference and incompetence. Burke also explores many examples of the consequences of ignorance that come from the long history of outbreak of disease and pandemics from the14th century outbreak of bubonic plague to the Coronavirus, more recently. True ignorance, but also willful ignorance, hubris and resistance to new knowledge and technologies, have all been part of the story, and history seems to repeat itself. For instance, quarantine was resisted by business in the 19th century cholera outbreak as in the 2020 pandemic. Ignorance and outdated beliefs have across time led to what is called the ‘Scapegoat Syndrome’. As for resistance against preventive measures, it goes back in time. For instance, he writes that inoculation against smallpox, “a practice long known in China and the Middle East, became the subject of vigorous debate before it was adopted in 18th century Europe.”  Later in 1904 in Rio de Janeiro it led to the ‘Vaccine Revolt.’  Burke, however, warns against simplistic explanations, adding that it was not only the result of ignorance due to illiteracy and poverty, but an angry response to interference in people’s lives by the authorities and a clash between different cultures.

In the last few chapters of the book more important themes are explored, like secrets and lies in the world of science and scholarship, in politics and industry, denial and cover-ups of disasters, massacres and scandals, taboo historical events omitted from school history textbooks, deception of the masses by rulers, censorship and surveillance, and whistleblowers supporting transparency and divulging critical information to the public, in the age of the Internet. Publications have in different eras generally been subjected to censorship by authorities, to a lesser or greater degree depending on the country. In early Europe there was to a double censorship, both religious and political. However, writers have often been able to pass their messages or criticism of authoritarian regimes through the use of allegories, where animals stand for humans, by writing about other similar historical eras and events or by publications that are made and distributed secretly by hand.

Burke says that denial is a defence mechanism for both individuals and institutions, but public denial is also a form of disinformation. Denial and cover-ups go back a long way, but denial of atrocities in warfare, genocides, nuclear accidents, global warming became more frequent or at least better known, in the 20th century. The Holocaust denial, one of the better known examples, is still with us even though by 1942 millions of Germans knew what was going on in camps. Suppression of research (tobacco companies), encouraging disbelief in what has been exposed, spreading doubt or false rumours, forged documents, are all methods of what has been described as the ‘manufacture’ of ignorance and the maintenance of ignorance.

Disinformation includes damaging others’ reputation, interfering in elections of another country, deliberate propagation of misleading information, which Burke writes: “has exploded in the past century, driven both by new technologies for disseminating information …..  and by the increased sophistication of those who would mislead us.” As for the prospects of truth, he notes: “The current proliferation of ‘fake news’ is an alarming one, but the prospects for truth are not completely black. Just as cover-ups are followed by uncovering, so the lies current in the media are regularly exposed by fact-checking agencies on their websites.”

And while scholars are interested in ignorance, business writers and consultants use ignorance and our fear of uncertainty to gain. We are all ignorant of the future and techniques for managing this ignorance and the fears connected to this uncertainty can prove lucrative for some. Burke remarks “if we read the predictions of futurologists decades after they have been made, the failures spring to our eyes.” Rather than our consuming futurologists’ predictions he suggests it would be wiser to study the past, not because the past is a source of precedent on which we can base our own predictions, but on the common sense grounds that it could prevent us repeating mistakes. Ignorance of history on the part of voters can function like a kind of collective amnesia with important consequences. Burke provides examples like the case of Spain. He writes that the return to democracy after the death of Franco was assisted by memories of the Civil War, and later when the Left was defeated largely because it was divided, memories of that defeat encouraged different parties to work together in the 1970s; however, now (2021) that the memory of the Civil War has faded, Spanish democracy appears to be becoming more fragile. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith coined the phrase immunizing memory believing that memory is a better protective measure than law.

Epilogue

Inevitably, each book we select to read, each film we watch, each field we decide to study or specialize in, each language or activity we choose to learn and engage with, necessitates our omitting or ignoring something else, and the more one learns and knows the more one becomes aware of the immensity of one’s ignorance. As knowledge shifts so does ignorance. And no matter how much we know or are capable of learning, our ignorance [even for the very smart, the highly educated, and polymaths], will always be greater than any knowledge we can hope to acquire in the short span of a human life.

It might be wise then to try to be somewhat selective as to where we want to spend our energy and time, in terms of the things we want to know, which is not that easy in an age where we are bombarded by information, and real and fake news, not to mention the overwhelming knowledge that has been acquired. As for my recent choice of this book, I have felt that it was worth the time and energy I invested in it. It increased my knowledge, refreshed my memory, and also, brought my ignorance to the forefront of my awareness.

Also, it is useful to bear in mind that everybody has knowledge, irrespectively of literacy and education, but of different things, and everyone is ignorant to a lesser or greater degree. Burke quotes Mark Twain, who said that ‘We are all ignorant, just about different things.’ And we can choose either to be generous in sharing knowledge or to withhold information that could otherwise benefit others and facilitate their decision making. Lies and the withholding of important information can often function either as tools of control or lead individuals or masses of people astray, decreasing their possibility of wise choice.

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An inspiring story from Australia

“Children become attached to whoever functions as their primary caregiver. But the nature of that attachment—whether it is secure or insecure—makes a huge difference over the course of a child’s life. Secure attachment develops when caregiving includes emotional attunement. Attunement starts at the most subtle physical levels of interaction between babies and their caretakers, and it gives babies the feeling of being met and understood.” From The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Today’s post includes a book from Australia, and a brief introduction to a podcast on attachment.

Penguin the Magpie: The Odd Little Bird Who Saved a Family, by photographer Cameron Bloom, and friend, writer and wild life conservationist, Bradley Trevor Greive, is a true story of heartache, love, courage and hope. It is the story of a rescued wounded Magpie chick and her human family, which is in deep pain and distress. The book recounts Sam Bloom’s terrible accident, which leaves her paralyzed and feeling hopeless, and her journey back from the edge of death and the depths of despair and depression, with the aid and love of her family and a small magpie.

The book begins with Eduardo Galeano’s poem: Family

As people know in black Africa and indigenous America, your

family is your entire village with all its inhabitants. Living or dead.

Your relatives aren’t only human.// Your family also speaks to you….. // in the rain that kisses you  //  and in the birdsong that greets your footsteps.

Sam Bloom was a shy, sporty Australian girl determined to become a nurse and travel across Africa. She fell in love with Cameron Bloom, passionate about photography and travelling, and together they travelled around the world, raised three boys and built a life together on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. And then, in a single horrific moment in Thailand, where the family had gone on a trip, everything changed.

During Sam’s darkest moments, Penguin, an injured magpie chick abandoned after her fall from her nest, and rescued by her son, enters their lives. Penguin becomes a focal point of love and joy, as the whole family nurses her back to health. They all forge a bond with Penguin, and the bird becomes attached to them, especially, Sam. Watching this little bird recover and grow, and eventually fly, brings them joy and healing, and serves as inspiration for Sam in her own journey. Her husband’s beautiful photographs capture this experience.

Through the love and support of her environment Sam was able to reconnect with her love for the ocean. She found a renewed sense of purpose in taking up competitive kayaking, which placed her 13th in the world. She went on to become a para-surfing champion, winning three gold medals for Australia. Ten years after the accident she and her husband were able to return to Africa, with their sons, Rueben 22, Noah 20, and Oli 18, this time. Today Sam Bloom’s activities today include sharing her journey, as a global keynote speaker for paraplegics, and her work as an ambassador for Surfers for Climate emphasizing the importance of ocean conservation.

One can see some of this material online at: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/gallery/2016/oct/13/penguin-bloom-how-a-scruffy-magpie-rescued-a-family

Also, the movie, Penguin Bloom, starring Naomi Watts and Andrew Lincol,.is based on the Bloom’s story.

Finally, a few extracts from the book:

Besides our love for the ocean, we shared a passion for travel. Whenever we could get away to explore the world and experience new cultures we would shrug on backpacks and set off for parts unknown. We didn’t have much money, but that didn’t matter as neither of us cared for luxury resorts or packaged holidays. Sam and I are outdoors people, we prefer dusty trails to city streets, mud huts to museums and street food to dining…….. By the time we’d celebrated our tenth anniversary we’d trekked around the Mediterranean and beyond, Sam’s dream to visit Africa was realized five times over….. We also explored the Middle East and set foot in places that are now completely off-limits to tourists. The further we went, the more we fell in love. The more deeply we fell in love, the further we wanted to travel.

Her injuries are such that she can never feel comfortable, regardless of the resting surface or her body position….. Even when Sam goes to bed she is denied the sweet relief of a good night’s sleep. I help her turn over three times before dawn in order to maintain her circulation and to prevent pressure sores.

Sam felt broken and utterly adrift. I saw the light in her eyes grow dim. I knew she was withdrawing from this world. That such a fiercely free and passionate spirit could now be anchored beyond our love by pain and a steel chair was too much for us to bear……

And this is where penguin came into her own. She was our fearless ambassador of love and chief motivational officer…….. Penguin had no problem speaking up on Sam’s behalf and, in doing so, this plucky bird helped Sam realize that her needs mattered….

From cradling Penguin in my hands and holding Sam in my arms I can tell you that every nerve cell, every blood vessel, every atom of our being is precious. But we are all so much more than the sum of our fragile parts. We are all our journeys, hopes, and dreams, clad in mortal wrapping paper.

In the epilogue there is a personal message from Sam, who writes about what it is really like to face life in a wheelchair, without glossing over her loss or struggles:

Becoming a paraplegic has not been an unexpected gift; the new perspectives granted me cannot be equated with a great spiritual awakening, and I don’t feel this experience has made me a better person or given me new found purpose.

It has given me the chance to see the very best in my husband and our children, even while I was at my lowest point. These are beautiful insights for which I am grateful, despite their appalling cost….. Without the support of my husband and our children, our immediate families, and our dearest friends (especially Penguin), I’m not sure I would still be here, and I know I wouldn’t be doing as well as I am.

In this week’s (19/05/2025) Being Well podcast, which you can watch at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4hhBkOFfwU, Forrest, and his father, Rick Hanson, explore disorganized or what is also considered the more “fearful” attachment style, which typically arises as a result of trauma or / and difficult life experiences, especially early on in life, and involves both anxious and avoidant modes of insecure attachment, where both emotional intimacy and distance can feel uncomfortable. They touch upon various aspects and questions concerning attachment theory** , developments in the field, and suggestions on how to heal through integrating parts of ourselves that carry uunmet (emotional) needs.

**British psychologist John Bowlby was the first attachment theorist, who was interested in understanding the anxiety and distress that children experience when separated from their primary caregivers. Bowlby saw attachment as the secure base from which a child moves out into the world. He believed that the earliest bonds formed by children with their caregivers have a tremendous impact throughout life. Bowlby and others, viewed attachment mostly as a product of evolutionary processes, and proposed that children are born with an innate drive to form attachments with caregivers. Throughout history, children who maintained proximity to an attachment figure were more likely to receive comfort and protection and, therefore, more likely to survive to adulthood, and so through the process of natural selection, a motivational system designed to regulate attachment emerged. The central theme of attachment theory is that primary caregivers, who are available, consistent and responsive to an infant’s needs allow the child to develop a sense of security, and to learn that the caregiver is dependable, which creates a secure base, that allows the child to explore the world.

What we now know about attachment has evolved, and the ways we tend to attach to others can shift over time, both for the best (earned secure attachment) and the worst, depending on our experiences and relationships. The neuroplasticity of the brain allows for changes to occur throughout our life, and allows us to shift from insecure attachment styles to a more secure state of being and relating. It’s also useful to remember that we probably use different styles or combinations of secure and insecure relating with different people, and in different contexts and phases of our life. A more contemporary attachment theory views attachment as dynamic and less static, a process also shaped by nervous system states moment to moment, as well as, circumstances.

During this episode Forrest and Rick talk about attachment theory and styles, and the influence of both our temperament and broader social environments beyond family; leveraging coping mechanisms, even seemingly dysfunctional ones, for healing, through firstly understanding which coping mechanisms we used as children, but also later on; why “boring” relationships can be transformative, and more.There are references to Mary Ainsworth’s research, and Kim Bartholomew and Leonard Horowitz’s 1990s model of four prototypic attachment patterns, which are defined by using combinations of our (positive or negative) self-image and our (positive or negative) image of others. There’s mention of Margaret Mahler’s, separation–individuation theory of child development, in which rapprochement is a crucial phase where infants, typically during their second year, begin to navigate their growing independence while maintaining a sense of closeness with their primary caregiver, as they develop greater awareness of self and separateness from the mother or other caregiver.

Finally, what we call disorganized attachment is often closely linked to [complex] trauma, so the last part of the podcast focuses on the more trauma-informed therapeutic approaches, what good, healthy, reliable relationships feel and look like [they include predictability, and consistency, and emotional validation, and they aren’t punishment oriented], and the questions and steps one could ask and take in order to embrace the more anxious, avoidant or ambivalent parts of oneself, so as to reach a place of more agency and choice. They suggest ways to develop more secure attachments through self trust, self respect, and through embracing our unmet needs, giving a voice to the aspects of ourself that were voiceless, and actually feeling free to fully embrace what we really want and to pull for appropriate social supplies from others. Rick says: “You’re giving voice to the despairing child inside, who watched the caregiver just walk out of the room….. You become integrated through self-expression, your own expression….. Τhere’s kind of a paradox that the more that we are full-throated and wholehearted in what we communicate, the less we need perfect attunement from others.”