The Ghost of Christmas Present
“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. … most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom.”
- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)
Our family would typically watch the movie “A Christmas Carol” every year during the holiday season. We always watched the 1984 George C Scott version, which to me is the best manifestation of the story. Scott is a convincing Scrooge. The acting throughout the movie is first-rate.
There is one moment, a pivotal one, at the end of the “ghost of Christmas Present” scene where the ghost spreads his robe apart to reveal two sickly, sad, almost malevolent looking children. The specter is so terrifying, that one of my sons would run away or bury his head in the couch to not see the frightening characters under the robe.
The kid was no chicken. He went on to become a Marine and then eventually a Green Beret. Tough guy that he is, I suspect he’s still unsettled about the specter of “ignorance and want.” You should be too.
Dickens' decision to elevate ignorance above want as the harbinger of doom reflects his understanding of how societal decay can lead to harmful societal events. The Victorian era was known for the dichotomy of unprecedented material deprivation and record-smashing industrial expansion. Yet, Dickens perceived the greater threat was not physical hunger but the systematic denial of knowledge and understanding, especially to the poorest citizens.
The Victorian approach to ignorance operated through structural mechanisms that resulted in systemic intellectual deprivation. The educational system, designed to produce workers rather than thinkers, exemplified what Paolo Freire would later term the "banking model" of education - treating students as empty vessels to be filled with approved knowledge rather than active participants in understanding their world.
Religious institutions of the Victorian era wielded extraordinary influence in maintaining social hierarchies through carefully curated biblical interpretation. The Church of England, in particular, developed what might be called a "theology of station." It was an intricate framework that spiritualized class distinctions. Clergy routinely emphasized passages like "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters" (Ephesians 6:5) and "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers" (Romans 13:1), while giving far less attention to texts that challenged social inequity. The prophetic literature of Amos, with its searing condemnation of those who "trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain" (Amos 5:11), was rarely emphasized in Victorian pulpits. Similarly, James's piercing critique of economic exploitation - "Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you" (James 5:4) - received far less attention than passages promoting social stability.
The selective biblical interpretation served multiple purposes. It provided divine sanction for status quo social arrangements, offered spiritual comfort to the privileged classes, and crucially, helped maintain what Anglican theologian F.D. Maurice termed "the constitution of Christian society" - a vision of harmonious social order that conveniently aligned with industrial capitalism's need for a docile workforce. The prophetic tradition, with its searing critiques of economic exploitation and calls for social justice, was often relegated to historical curiosity.
The cultural institutions of the time – everything from mechanics' institutes to public libraries – would reinforce these hierarchies through subtle mechanisms of exclusion. Access to real learning was stratified. Working-class education emphasized practical skills and moral instruction, while classical education, with its access to Greek, Latin, and philosophical texts, remained largely the province of the privileged. Even initiatives meant to promote working-class literacy often did so within carefully prescribed boundaries, offering what Matthew Arnold called "culture in doses" - just enough to promote social stability without threatening existing power structures.
Fast forward to today; the opposite has occurred. Instead of the Victorian restriction of knowledge, our world now faces rising levels of ignorance from a more subtle and insidious mechanism - abundant information. While we have shifted from an era of information scarcity to one of overwhelming surplus, the transition has not delivered the enlightenment one might have expected. Instead, we face what philosopher Harry Frankfurt presciently termed "bullshit" - not just falsehood, but an indifference to truth itself, a condition where the very concept of reality loses meaning.
It’s an echo of God's rebuke to Job: "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?" (Job 38:2). The expansion of words through digital platforms doesn’t illuminate, it obscures. The collapse of shared frameworks for discovering truth has resulted in a systematic devaluation of knowledge and of ways of knowing.
This overwhelming torrent of information, enabled by digital technology, makes it difficult to differentiate between signal and noise. Like the Victorian factory owners who once controlled access to education, modern algorithmic systems seek to shape our attention by creating echo chambers that reinforce existing beliefs rather than challenging them. This architecture of ignorance leads to what legal scholar Cass Sunstein identifies as "group polarization" - the tendency of like-minded individuals to adopt increasingly extreme positions, fragmenting society into isolated islands of certainty surrounded by seas of mutual incomprehension.
The Bible consistently links knowledge with moral responsibility. Hosea said, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4:6). This suggests that ignorance is not just a benign absence of information but actually leads to moral failure that can endanger the entire fabric of society. Dickens' vision echoes the prophetic tradition, underscoring that society can survive material poverty but cannot survive the death of truth. When ignorance becomes widespread, whether through Victorian constraints or information oversupply, it can create fertile ground for what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil,” a collapse of moral reasoning that enables the commission of atrocities by otherwise “normal” individuals.
The doom Dickens foresaw can yet be averted. The Ghost's revelation of the seriousness of Ignorance demands more than contemplation, it directs us to work to dismantle the very architectures of intellectual impoverishment that plague our society. As Victorian reformers like John Ruskin and William Morris recognized, meaningful education isn't merely about transmitting information - it's about cultivating the capacity for moral reasoning and critical thought.
Structural change begins with moral awakening, but it cannot end there. Leaders, those with power or means, who recognize this truth, carry a deep responsibility. Educational institutions must be reclaimed as spaces of genuine intellectual formation rather than mere “checkbox” credentialing. This means advocating for “back to the basics” curricula that emphasize critical thinking over standardized testing and creating learning environments that foster what Paulo Freire called "conscientization" - the development of critical consciousness about social reality. It means building new institutions and reforming existing ones to prioritize the pursuit of wisdom over mere technical knowledge.
Leaders must work to create spaces, both physical and digital, where genuine dialogue can flourish across ideological divides. Strategies should be implemented to strengthen independent journalism that prioritizes truth over engagement metrics. Tech and media giants should be required to be transparent about the algorithms that shape our shared information environment.
Above all, we must recover what Hannah Arendt called "the right to have rights" - in this case, the right to an education that empowers individuals to be fully informed and capable participants in society.
Dickens' warning reverberates more powerfully today than ever, not as a harbinger of despair but as a call to action. The specter of ignorance that haunts this digital era can be banished, but only if leaders will commit to the hard work of educational and social reformation. We can watch passively as algorithmic clouds increase across our intellectual landscape, or we can light the fires of critical thought and moral reasoning that light the path to genuine understanding.
The Ghost of Christmas Present shows us the status quo. The future, whether doom or dawn, rests in the hands of those who will lead.