Dear editor,

In regards to the editorial published in last week’s edition, as a young American I find myself agreeing with all of the ideas articulated, and I found it was poetic.

However, as a child of the Age of Information, I have to say that ignorance cannot be so gently subdued.

Because when I think back on the apparent vortex of information that has so seemingly taken over our daily lives, I am faced with a single, recurrent question: how has ignorance been allowed to prevail? This will often flow to, “How have riots become commonplace in our ‘forward society’”? How has western democracy, the ideology that placed a man on the moon, devolved into a passionate climate change denier being elected president? How have we so seemingly disregarded what people have died for, and continue to perish because of, the happenstance of melanocytes?”

When anything one could want to know is just a few keystrokes away, it’s hard to dispel such smallness as anything other than a choice.
Knowing what we know and having nearly endless access to what we don’t, is there not an inherent responsibility to better one’s surroundings? Or at the very least consider more than oneself? How can anything less be justifiable?

Now, clearly I am not advocating for the omniscience of everyone, that’s just not probable. And of course, ignorance, in innocence, is forgivable.

But when fear and hate supplant compassion and empathy, that is indefensible. We owe it to ourselves, each other, and future humans, to not be anything less.

– Samuel McCullough
freshman, neuroscience