Selective inattention

Growing up in a society burdened with incessant hawking makes protective ignorance an invaluable skill. The constant drone of the advertiser's demands wears thin the coat of kind attention, and demands instead a thicker cloak to shield the mind from scrabbling greed.

Ignorance thus becomes a cherished friend, a protective patron to dim the clamoring hordes demanding attendance on their petitions for time and money. One learns to circumvent the ever more insistent cries with an polished indifference that shines; battle hardened and nearly impenetrable to the daily onslaught.

Such armor comes at a price, however. The insulative properties isolate not only the malevolent but the deserving as well. One equates empathy with vulnerability, and vulnerability with weakness; thus measuring strength as the impregnability to the emotions and concerns of others. Eyes watch, ears hear, but neither perceives the import of the input, thus reducing sensory perception to unimportant static, irrelevant data that may be summarily discarded.

The same indifferent ignorance soon overwhelms one's own self; disregarding the soul's entreaties for human sustenance by squandering attention on trivial diversions. Growing the void with meticulous apathy, a headful of hollow becomes the goal rather than the byproduct one's life; leading the intentionally unwary beyond the pale of morality and humanity.