As others have pointed out, you don't have to travel to Eastern Turkey to find examples. Just going to a local mall anyplace in the US would reveal plenty of evidence.
And I think there is just one primary reason for it: lack of a proper education. It seems like a herculean task just to get most people to the level of basic literacy these days, much less getting them to the point where they are knowledgeable enough to be able to properly vote in a representative democracy.
Nah, it's not just about education.
The discussion was just what examples of shocking ignorance have you noticed before and possibly what do you think the reasons for that are.
Even in Eastern Turkey most people have TVs and access to computers if not their own computer.
The reasons? I think flyingchicken (and others) hit it:
Being uninformed of certain things is just reflective of interests.
I've wondered about this a lot of times, cause I often catch myself surprised by some people's ignorance on subjects I'd always thought was common knowledge.
It seems to me that it is simply about interest. And many, many people are not interested in much outside of their immediate vicinity.
I actually made a similar thread like this a while ago:
Heard and seen since last time. Some of the interesting stories:
Two guys (Norwegian high school graduates from what I could tell) were sitting behind me on the plane, one of them were apparently reading some magazine:
- Hey, there's an Easter crossword here. Do you know which city Shakespeare was born in?
- Shakespeare?
- Yeah, you know. The guy from Italy.
"I'm studying about Germany in the build-up to WWII."
"I see, are you doing about its relationship with Russia?"
"I thought Germany was a part of Russia..."
American high school senior: "Do you have restaurants in Germany?"
I've been asked what a Nintendo 64 is.
I once heard somebody ask if Urdu and Arabic were the same language, because, "they are both Muslim."
Person A: "Where was the USSR again?"
Person B: "You dumbass, you don't know? It was in Africa."
Person A: "Oooooh. Well that certainly does explain a lot."
1st year law students. After I started taking some electives from the law faculty, it really became completely mind-boggling why they, for some reason or another, persistently look down on us pol-sciers.
And of course, some people are just stupid (or really restrictive in what they're interested in):
"Oh, there's Ikea in Sweden too?" - Danish girl to me while driving through Stockholm.
"Sweden's got two brands of cars, Denmark's only got Opel." - Same girl.
"Arnold Swarzenegger is Swedish, right?" - Again, same girl.
"Is Hiroshima a Chinese city?" - And yes, it's from the same girl.
Sometimes I wonder if things were better before, and that pop-culture or the excess wealth or something have just made people lazy, stupid and ignorant. But I doubt it: In the good, old days people were struggling to survive, communication was limited and news traveled rather slowly.
But it seems to me that even when we all became able to access all the information in the world, that vast majority of people still don't bother.
Is that a problem?
