"It is impossible for a person to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows." (Epictetus)
Seems we all know that one person who thinks he or she knows everything. The one person who can't be told anything because they seem to already know. A trait mostly found in teenagers, only some never grow out of it.
One night we were discussing a movie when a certain person chirped, "Oh, yeah. Seen it a bunch of times already. I know all about it." We looked at each other and wondered out loud, "how? It hasn't even been released yet?" The response? "Well, I just have."
That kind of person.
There are two kinds of ignorance: there is one who is not-knowing (ἀγνοεῖς--"agnoia" or "the agnostic") and the one who is not-learning (ἀμαθίᾳ--"amathia"). Here is our person, the know-it-all. The mind that endangers itself.
We might better understand if we divide the not-learning ("ignorant," as it were) into two camps: those who lack the natural ability to learn and those who are (in the words of Robert Musii) "intelligently stupid." Intelligence has not failed the know-it-all; rather, he or she has failed intelligence.
D.R. Khashaba says "amathia", "is not lack of knowledge: in its milder variety, it is obscure and confused thought; in its more pernicious variety, it is ‘disknowledge’ instilled into the soul by bad upbringing and bad education, consisting in false values and notions and beliefs.”
This leads us to question Socrates (no pun intended), who said, "nobody does wrong willingly," meaning that no person is wrong on purpose. If the soul is infused with disknowledge and is pointed to truth, that soul has a choice to learn. Should that soul chose to remain not-learning ("ignorant") and reject truth, that is willful defiance and the only outcome is destruction, for the self first and then others who follow suit. Like Hitler, David Koresh, Jim Jones--all thought they were doing right in their own eyes, but were instead practitioners of intelligent stupidity.
