The Complex Dynamics of Deliberate Ignorance and the Desire to Know in Times of Transformation: The Case of Germany

Abstract

Individuals and institutions in societies in transition face diffi cult questions: whether or not to seek, explore, and produce public knowledge about their harrowing past. Not disclosing painful truths can be a conduit to reconciliation, as in premodern memory politics, but it can also mask the past regime's perpetrators, benefactors, and its victims, highlighted in modern memory politics. Using the transformations of twentieth-century Germany as a case study, this chapter argues that deliberate ignorance has always been an element of memory politics, even in the twentieth-century approach to Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past), with its emphasis on knowledge, remembrance, and disclosure. Profoundly dialectic in nature, deliberate ignorance can modulate the pace of change in periods of transition and preserve social cohesion, while simultaneously undermining personal trust and institutional confi dence. Turning to individuals' decisions to read or not read the fi les compiled on them by the East German's Ministry for State Security, it is argued that offi cial memory politics and individuals' knowledge preferences need not concur. In the public records and in initial results of an empirical analysis of individuals' choice not to read their fi les, highly diverse and distinct reasons for deliberate ignorance have been observed.

Age differences in deliberate ignorance.

“…Under ignorance, they can assume that no such unspeakable breach of trust was committed. Knowledge carries the risk of a great loss (betrayal) and negative feelings (sadness, rage), but also the possibility of alleviating needless doubts and worries (see Ellerbrock & Hertwig, 2020).…”

Strategic illiteracies: the long game of technology refusal and disconnection

“…Appearing uninformed may also communicate something desirable to others. 12 Analysis at larger, collective levels has a stronger tendency to emphasize problems of ignorance, such as misinformation or racism (Mills, 2007), with notable exceptions, e.g., traumatized communities balancing remembrance and forgetting (e.g., Ellerbrock & Hertwig, 2021).…”

Blinding to circumvent human biases: Deliberate ignorance in humans, institutions, and machines

“…Colleagues, friends, and even family were tasked with spying on anyone the Stasi suspected of disloyalty. In 1991, shortly after German reunification, people were allowed to access their files to see what the Stasi had recorded and who had informed on them (sometimes with heartbreaking results; Ellerbrock & Hertwig, 2021). In the following three decades, over 2,000,000 citizens applied to view their files.…”

“…Why have so many people decided not to know whether they were spied on or betrayed? Hertwig and Ellerbrock (2022) identified a range of people's motives for not accessing one's Stasi file, including concerns that they would discover that colleagues or loved ones had informed on them, as well as fear that the information they found might affect their ability to trust others (see also Ellerbrock & Hertwig, 2021). A motive that closely relates to concerns of fairness also emerged.…”