Willful Blindness

You can take a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

What about the guy who is taking the horse to water? Does he and his community react in a rational way when faced with inconvenient facts?

Willful blindness seems to be a lot more common that we would care to believe. An excellent TED talk by Margaret Heffernan -



But then, as always, there are at least two ways of looking at anything. Heffernan refers to USA's actions in Iraq and the Middle East as an act of willful blindness, but Edward Luttwak, the "Machiavelli of Maryland" seems to consider it a brilliant strategic move that would keep the Shias and Sunni's fighting with each other for the next thousand years.

Blindness too may lie in the eye of the beholder.

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LINKS:

* The Machiavelli of Maryland (9 Dec., 2015, The Guardian) -- http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/09/edward-luttwak-machiavelli-of-maryland