A while back I wrote a post about being deliberately ignorant.
I also wrote a bunch of posts about the Sackler family – and their consultant partners – who continually looked for ways to keep selling their opioid, Oxycontin, by claiming it was safe, despite evidence it was causing huge addiction problems and death across the USA.
I talked about how my father had said the reason for this was because that by denying complicity in a situation, people can continue to convince themselves their achievements and motivations are worthy of accolades, rather than anger.
Well recently I read a quote that sums it all up very eloquently.
It’s from Upton Sinclair, who said:
“Man has difficulty understanding something if his salary depends on his not understanding”.
Now, I appreciate money is important, but I find it interesting the people who are often the worst examples of this sort of behaviour are very wealthy … the people who already have enough money to live a hundred lifetimes in comfort but want more and don’t care what the impact of that greed is.
So they lie.
Deny.
Turn tables.
Pay people off.
Hire PR companies.
Talk about ‘their purpose’ to help humanity.
Anything but accept their culpability in reality.
But then, when you hear how they continue to get out of the justice they deserve – even when the law finally catches up with them – simply by sticking steadfast to their denials, and having an extortionately expensive legal team who [allegedly] have a huge amount of influence and interactions with the judge presiding over the case [see pic at top of this post] … you realise deliberate ignorance is one of the smartness things you can do.
If you’re evil.