Why “benightedness” is a great word
BENIGHTEDNESS — [Noun] The state of being in intellectual or moral darkness; profound ignorance or lack of enlightenment. From benighted (past participle of benight, meaning 'to overtake with darkness or night', from be- (thoroughly) + night) + -ness (suffix forming abstract nouns indicating a state or quality). Unlike nescience, which neutrally denotes a lack of knowledge, or unawareness, which suggests a simple failure to notice, benightedness is a suffocating, all-encompassing dusk of the mind. It is the coarse grit of superstition worked into the skin, the stale, close air of a dogma-shuttered room, and the heavy, unyielding warmth of a communal certainty that mistakes its own hearth-smoke for the sun. It is not the absence of light, but the condition of having grown accustomed to the dark.