The Danger of Ignoring the Obvious Margaret Heffernan’s tell a story of Gayla Benefield an ordinary woman that live in a small town called Libby, Montana. She start to noticed that a lot of people of the middle aged, basically men, were suffering of some kind of chronic respiratory disease, and even became more suspicious when her parents both died relatively young. Then she discovered that the town was the home of a Vermiculite mine, and this same material was used in playgrounds, soil conditioner, football ground, in farms, etc. but it was not known at the time, that this same material is a very toxic type of Asbestos, making there all the connections and uncover and awful secret abut her hometown. It was a well-known secret that in Libby, Montana the mortality rate at that time was 80 percent higher than anywhere else in US. That alarming data make her speak about the issue and try to tell them about it,…show more content… Hefferman’s defined Willing Blindness as “a legal concept which means if there’s information that you could know or should know but you manage not to know and you do not want to know”. Basically you are chosen not to know. She stated that is normal for all people have being in some way in their life willing blindness. The willing blindness is not something new and it’s not likely to go away anytime soon. Basically she explain that people have fear about it because they are afraid of retaliation or that some people are blind because they think even if they know something it is just pointless like thinking nothing ever going to change. She also explain there’s a lot of willful blindness around us in huge scales, putting as a example the national banks when they sell mortgages to thousand of people who couldn’t afford them or the cases of child abuses that went ignored for decades by the catholic church. Hefferman’s also explain that this also exist in small scales like in peoples families, communities and particularly in organizations and
