Willful Ignorance

By Russell Willis

willful ignorance

rendered as scent, evokes

a smoldering book

Turns out, I knew it all along.

It was there, and not so deep within.

There, not lurking but waiting.

Waiting to be discovered…no…rediscovered;

knowing that it was true (or false) because,

turns out, I have a conscience.

I knew it even when I tried to ignore it,

pretending it was not, insisting it was not,

shouting that it was not, AND NEITHER ARE YOU!

All that work, that tiresome debilitating work,

to try to hide from the truth, so much hiding,

from so much truth.  

It is not even that I should have known.

I did know, but damned if I would listen.

Damned if I would act, that I would say no,

or yes, or whatever needed to be said,

to be done, to be remembered as true.

And here we are ignoring, again… 

Russell Willis: I have become increasingly alarmed (not only as an ethicist but as a pro-democracy American) at how easy it is for voters and politicians to disregard what they know (or at least suspect) to be true for political or economic reasons. Often taking the form of anti-science, revisionist history, or anti-wokeness, willful ignorance by those we choose as our leaders and spokespeople is not only a form of lying; it often lurks as a weapon of hate and evil.  I wrote the poem in the first person to remind us that it is all too human to go to great lengths tying ourselves in emotional and ethical knots to satisfy a bad conscience.

Ethicist and online education entrepreneur, Russell Willis, emerged as a poet in 2019. Russell grew up in and around Texas, was vocationally scattered throughout the Southwest and Great Plains for many years, and is now settled in Vermont with his wife, Dawn.