Shift

A few months ago I came across a passage from a book written by a Brazilian writer talking about ignorance in a very fresh way.  

Unfortunately, the title of said book wasn't given by the person who recited it (an actor), and even though I looked for it it was nowhere online. 

So... I'll post my next favourite from her.  I like the idea contained in the quotation I couldn't find, which turns ignorance on its head, seeing the potential in it. (From memory, it is something like "knowledge is always limited; not knowing is limitless."  

How many of us can honestly claim to not have wished for the opportunity to read a book, listen to a piece of music, or see a film or painting, all over again, for the first time?  Only ignorance makes the first time possible. 

“I do not know much. But there are certain advantages in not knowing. Like virgin territory, the mind is free of preconceptions. Everything I do not know forms the greater part of me: This is my largesse. And with this I understand everything. The things I do not know constitute my truth.” 

Clarice Lispector

There is a certain, specific kind of liberation in the act of shifting one's perception or body in order to look at the same thing and see something new.

The idea that prejudice comer from ignorance makes the ears of reason perk up in alert suspicion.  I think this idea is incomplete. It's maimed or badly articulated.  To me, prejudice comes not from ignorance, but from incomplete knowledge of a certain thing; it comes from failure to dig deep enough, or failure to understand. Not understanding and not knowing are two different concepts to me.  There are many things one can know about or of, and yet not understand, not grasp the core of what makes the thing itself.