The Bard reflects on sharing a bed, and why he wont go to Chelsea
When you can’t see the wood for the trees
JOHN GREEN is dissatisfied with a book that fails to address the promotion of ignorance as a ruling-class strategy to maintain control
KNOWLEDGE FOR ALL: Wycliffe's Bible in the British Library - Jorge Luis Borges mentions Wycliffite Bibles in his short story The Book of Sand, where he calls it the ‘Black-letter Wyclif,’ in reference to the Blackletter script used to write the publication
[Coldupnorth/CC] 
MARY CONWAY applauds a new play that foresees the unscrupulous tactics of a future far-right minority government
RON JACOBS is moved to tears by an eloquent journal of heartfelt intensity and human portraiture
ROBERT OVETZ recommends a case study, from the University of Leicester, in their struggle against precarization, AI, privatisation, outsourcing, and work intensification in higher education
IAN SINCLAIR welcomes a lucid critique of a technology that reproduces and enables oppression, power, and environmental devastation
SIMON PARSONS applauds an impassioned demonstration of the fundamental role of women in the history and protection of the forest ecosystem
Ignorance and Bliss – On Wanting Not To Know
Mark Lilla, Hurst, £18.99
MARK LILLA, Professor of Humanities at Columbia University, purports to investigate the contrary disposition to curiosity: the will not to know, the will to ignorance.
Certainly an interesting subject, but he treats it quintessentially as a disquisition from the ivory tower of academe. He takes us on a seemingly aimless ramble though the thickets of mythology, Biblical narratives and religious belief.
He begins by using the example of Oedipus, the most notorious case of someone whose ignorance determines their tragic fate, then races on through the mythological basis of fascism, to the role played by Christian fundamentalism in the historical self-narrative of the US, but in a very superficial way.
More from this author
JOHN GREEN has doubts about the efficacy of the Freedom of Information Act, once trumpeted by Tony Blair
JOHN GREEN is enchanted by the story of women’s farm work, both now and the the 1940s, that brims with political and social insight
JOHN GREEN welcomes a remarkable study of Mozambique’s most renowned contemporary artist
Despite the primitive means the director was forced to use, this is an incredibly moving film from Gaza and you should see it, urges JOHN GREEN
