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On page 224 of OPAR Peikoff states “The mental practice that underlies the anti-effort attitude is the act of evasion, of blanking out some fact of reality which one dislikes. This act constitutes the essence of irrationality and, therefore, of evil.” I agree that evasion of a known fact is irrational and evil but I doubt it is the most common form. I believe what is more common is failing to make the effort to seek additional facts especially those which one suspects he/she may not like. In other words it is a type of self-imposed ignorance as opposed to suppressing knowledge you already have. For example, someone may believe in creative design rather than evolution. It is not that they know the facts supporting evolution but that they refuse to consider them.
I’m not sure I see a real difference between evasion and failing to seek facts one suspects are relevant. In Atlas, Rand described evasion as “the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment.” I think the basic question here is: How active does this have to be in order to legitimately be called evasion?
I would relate the basic psychological process to how it feels to edit an article. I’m reading along, and everything is flowing smoothly, but then I read something and get a vague, uneasy feeling. I’m not really sure why. I face a choice. (1) I can acknowledge the feeling and ask what caused it: Is there a problem with the text, or did I misread it, or do I need to expand my vocabulary? Or (2), I can ignore this feeling, which is effectively a “hunch” or “clue” that—if I am to remain in full-focused awareness—something requires investigation, and keep on reading. I think this is basically how most people experience the need to increase their awareness, and then they either do increase it, or ignore the feeling and fail to ask the requisite questions—even though they do suspect that they are on shaky ground in doing so.
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