A very wise professor of British history once pondered in front of his class, ‘why do we study the nineteenth century?’ Elaborating, he explained that the year 1800 was not overly significant and that conceptually, the French Revolution of 1789 might be a more sensible starting point for nineteenth century studies. The reason 1800-1900 is considered a worthy and sensible topic of scholarly enquiry, he concluded, is simply that by accident of history our ancestors accepted a Papal Bull in 1582 and adopted the Gregorian calendar (named for Pope Gregory XIII). There is no particular sense to it but we humans like order and symmetry. We enjoy documenting the passage of time and celebrating significant numbers – compare the celebration on 31 December 1999 to the previous or following year. And so it is with New Year’s Resolutions. It makes no more sense to examine your life and goals at the start of a calendar year than it does to do so at any other point but for reasons of culture and biology, we find ourselves glibly asking our friends as the clock counts out another year, ‘what are your resolutions?’

New Year’s Resolutions are generally an exercise in futility. A University of Bristol study in 2007 by Richard Wiseman suggested that 88 percent of resolutions end in failure. John Lehrer suggested in a Wall Street Journal article that the problem was simply that will power is a weak mental resource. His solution was to simply pick one thing rather than pushing your will power to breaking point by resolving to lose weight, start a journal, keep the house clean and quit smoking. Of course, that is fine advice but I wonder if there is more to it than this.       

The word resolution came into English usage around the beginning of the fifteenth century. Coming from the Latin term, resolutionem, it literally means to break something down into its simpler parts. It is also a linguistic relative of the word solve, coming from the Greek, lyein. A resolution is not simply a decision to do something or an agreement made between certain parties. Etymologically, it requires a process of deep thought and meditation. It means a mental exercise in breaking down something into its essential parts and then coming to a solution. It is an exercise in improvement.

New Year’s Resolutions used to border on the spiritual. Similar to the Catholic tradition of Lent, a period of serious, sustained, quite self-reflection was encouraged to examine one’s sins and resolve to live a more Godly life. Similarly, the Judaic holidays culminating in Yom Kippur was intended as a time of deep thought and the asking and giving of forgiveness. The ancient Greeks inscribed the immortal Socratic maxim, Know Thyself, on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. If a New Year’s Resolution is to be a real point of change, it needs to be the result of deep contemplation on what a good life really entails and how you can get closer to being a person you can be proud of.

The current mood of Western culture is schizophrenic in that it is self-absorbed without putting much emphasis on self-reflection. It is all well and good to decide to be healthier or to give up some bad habits and for the millions who will make a resolution along those lines, I wish you well. For a more fulfilling exercise, however, and one with more chance of success, spending an hour or so in serious contemplation, breaking down aspects of your life and coming to a solution may be even more rewarding. It may be time to think about reading more, meditating, re-opening the lines of communication with someone, being a more encouraging, optimistic person, visiting more museums, being kinder, volunteering or giving to charity. These are just generic suggestions of course and only if you take the time to examine yourself will the right choice become apparent.

What kind of person are you? What kind of person to you want to be? Those are two of the most basic human questions you can ask yourself. They are also two of the more difficult as, to a greater or lesser a degree, we will always find the former is not quite the same as the latter. That is the true joy of a New Year’s Resolution. It is a considered and resolute determination to be a better person, a person who is a positive impact on others and who can, without the least bit of pride or narcissism, honestly say they love themselves. I leave you with the words of American Methodist Episcopal Bishop, John Heyl Vincent, who in the horrors of the First World War, published the following postcard:

A Resolve for Every Morning of the New Year

 I will this day try to live a simple, sincere and serene life. Repelling promptly every thought of discontent, anxiety, discouragement, impurity and self seeking. Cultivating cheerfulness, magnanimity, charity and the habit of holy silence. Experiencing economy in expenditure, carefulness in conversation, diligence in appointed service, fidelity to every trust and a child-like trust in God.

 Happy New Year.

Ignorance truly is bliss. It means, after all, that you are free from the burden of knowledge, knowledge that perhaps would require some moral action. Increasingly our society in Australia and the broader Western world has developed the most powerful WMDs (weapons of mass distraction) known to humankind. We are bombarded with a level of stimulus utterly unknown since the dawn of existence. We find ourselves surrounded in a cocoon of plastic celebrities, sports results and news puff pieces. We are peddled the latest mass produced frivolities without mercy. We complain both that we are being exploited by consumer society and that we cannot live without the utterly useless luxuries that society creates. Perhaps it is our unconscious conviction that we do not have the power to change anything that makes us so hostile to those who champion change. Are we so comfortable in a languishing, apathetic, bottom-end-of-the-middle-class that we choose wilful ignorance over knowledge that could rock the shaky carvel that has never dared to venture out beyond the sight of shore? 

On 2 December 1980 three Catholic nuns and another church woman were brutally raped then murdered by a death squad in El Salvador’s tragic civil war. This in itself is shocking enough but there was another reason why people wished they could ignore the horrific crime. The murder was part of a long-running campaign of terror by the El Salvadorian military government which was being funded by the United States. In 1980 the US gave even more financial and military aid to the El Salvadorian junta than it did to Israel. Nearly 12 000 civilians were murdered by government forces that year, including the high profile Archbishop Oscar Romero who was shot through the heart while saying mass.

Less than a month after the nuns were killed, the actor turned politician, Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President of the United States. The killings had been widely reported. The New York Times in particular had run several articles on the death squads and their direct link to the government. Reagan chose the path of wilful ignorance. His administration went on the offensive and branded the Times journalists as communist sympathisers. Military aid and equipment increased in 1981. The number murdered that year is estimated at 16 000. In 1982, US aid nearly doubled to $82 million and Reagan assured the public that despite the reporting of ‘rouge’ journalists, the killings were the result of independent guerrillas, not the government of El Salvador.

The civil war in El Salvador went on for 12 bloody years. It ended in 1990 claiming some 75 000 victims. The United States finally reduced their aid after the United Nations stepped in. With the 1992 release of the UN Truth Commission and the confirmation of serious abuses of human rights on the part of the government, the US ended all aid. In 2002, George W. Bush visited El Salvador on the anniversary of Archbishop Romero’s death to celebrate the success of his father (who was Reagan’s vice-president before winning the top job). As the BBC deftly put it, ‘it takes a serious re-writing of history to portray El Salvador as a US success story.’

Why is ignorance so much easier than the truth? Why would a government and most of the nation prefer to ignore the facts than face them and change policy? Is it to do with pride? Are our egos too fragile to admit when we are in error? Or is it fear? Are we too afraid to have our worldviews challenged?

Consider climate change. How much clear scientific consensus does it take before deniers submit to the obvious? How about evolution? Why is it that opposition has been so fierce for so long? Ultimately, we are left with the haunting realisation that wilful ignorance is fuelled by ideological warfare. When someone is fundamentally committed to a worldview, they will dispute, discredit, ridicule, but preferably just ignore any and all evidence to the contrary. Reagan’s America simply did not want to believe that their government was funding a brutal regime of terror, so they didn’t. They simply ignored the crimes and where they could not ignore them, the obfuscated the facts and sought a scapegoat. The big oil and coal companies have no interest in learning what damage they do to the environment just as tobacco companies ignored health science for decades. Those Christians who read Genesis as a literal scientific text are similarly disinclined to entertain anything that undermines six day, young earth creationism.

Wilful ignorance is part of the human condition. We prefer to explore new ideas in a controlled environment where we expose only a small aspect of our worldview to the microscope. It is easier still, to simply retreat into a self-righteous shell of fear and to despise the ideological other. Although a valuable defence mechanism, it is healthy to challenge ourselves. It is crucial for our intellectual finesse to at least question a few things from time to time. It may be discomforting to think that the party you always voted for may actually be in the wrong or the war you always supported may be unjustifiable. Surely that is better than looking back, decades later and learning you were consistently on the wrong side of history. I will always respect the people who change a major aspect of their worldview. That is not weakness. That is the ability to think, to reason and reassess. That is the greatest strength of all.