Don't Know Don't Care

I saw this on a T-shirt the other day. You may have seen it too, etched in the mind of a rebellious teenager.

For me it's ok not to know but unforgivable if you don't then go to find out.

For example I was shown how to tie my jogging shoes recently. Quite a number of decades since I thought I had been taught this. Before that I found an article which showed me how to shave. This week I had a lady in a store tell me I was not picking up the box of water correctly.

All these things I am only finding out that I did not know. 

When did 'don't know' become a poor excuse. Probably around 2000, when search engines started to be smart. I can't ask how to spell something anymore nor can i ask many questions about how things work. It's all out there. People will teach you just about anything for free online. 

So why don't we care.

If it doesn't immediately help our lives and our problems, we just switch off. So how do we connect the caring with the learning. I'm supposed to answer that in a few lines. Today I started reading about public toilets in China. How ridiculous. Like many I have had my fair share of bad toilet experiences. So the subject made me curious. How could an entire nation mess up on toilet hygene. The reading took up more than half an hour. I am now educated on that system. I don't need to complain about the stench from the loo at the noodle bar in a backstreet of Beijing. I care because I want to find the best loo in China. I know it will probably not be in the railway station or park. 

So in principle I have answered the why questions and linked the idea with reality. What about bigger more important subjects, like our lives. Do we care about our lives? Who's ever typed in 'fix my life for free' in a search engine. I just did and I didn't get the answer i wanted. So now it's not that we don't know, we just don't know how to properly ask.