The Serious Risk of Wilful Blindness - Margaret Heffernan on a major human problem

Sometimes, not being mindful can be just plain wrong. This is a poignant short talk about a small town in Montana where a woman was doing work on gas meters and noticed that a lot of middle age men were on oxygen tanks. When her Dad died at a relatively young age, and then her mother died also at a relatively young age she started to wonder why these deaths were happening. She puzzled over this and started investigating vermiculite mine nearby. Vermiculite (we know now) is a very toxic form of asbestos. She started to talk to the community about the link between vermiculite and the deaths but they didn't want to know. Nobody believed her. She kept campaigning until a researcher came to town to research the mine and she told him her story and he eventually checked the facts and realised she was right. The community still didn't believe her and said things like 'the doctors would have told us'.

Eventually she convinced a federal agency to come to town to screeen 15,000. They discovered that the mortality rate of the town in 2002 was 80 times higher than any where else in the United States. Even then, people didn't look at the vermiculite lining the playground where her grandchildren played.

This is what Margaret Heffernan calls wilful blindness. It's not ignorance. It is a legal concept where there is information you should and could know but somehow you haven't learnt it. You have chosen not to know. This is happening all over our society - in businesses, in banking, in the church, in government. In big and small scales. A lot of people know there are problems but they are too afraid to raise them. There is a lot of silence and blindness. People don't talk out of fear, or they don't think it will make a difference or they feel that they will be deemed as 'whistle blowers'. Those that are whistle blowers in fact tend to be loyal, proud, and compelled to act.

This talk is not only a critical reminder about the importance of being mindful, being aware and being honest but it makes a seriously compelling case about the responsibility we all have to not be wilfully blind, to speak out and speak up for the sake of everyone.

When people are dying or being mistreated, we have to act. How can we not?

PS: She talks about the qualities of those who are willing to speak out and I think it is worth highlighting these qualities. They:
- use the freedoms they have
- use the arguments against them to make their arguments stronger and better
- are persistent
- are willing to have a lot of rows with people - they collaborate with their opponents
- are determined not to blind
- are patient
- are ordinary - just like you and me.