Basically I agree that you sometimes have to not look at things, and I like your framing of the hard question of wholesomeness. I think that the full art of deciding when it’s appropriate to not think about something be better discussed via a bunch of examples, rather than trying to describe it in generalities. But the individual decisions are ones that you can make wholesomely or not, and I think that’s my current best guess approach for how to handle this. Setting something aside, when it feels right to do so, with some sadness that you don’t get to get to the bottom of it, feels wholesome. Blithely dismissing something as not worth attention typically feels unwholesome, because of something like a missing mood (and relatedly, it not being clear that you’re attending enough to notice if it were worth more attention).
There’s also a question about how this relates to social reality. I think that if you’re choosing not to look at something because it doesn’t feel like it’s worth the attention, then if someone else raises it (because it seems important to them) it’s natural to engage with some curiosity that you now—for the space of the conversation—get to look at the thing a bit. You may explain why you don’t normally think about it, but you’re not actively trying to suppress it. I think the more unwholesome versions of not looking at something are much more likely to try to actively avoid or shut the conversation down.
I largely think that the section of the second essay on “wholesomeness vs expedience” is also applicable here.
Basically I agree that you sometimes have to not look at things, and I like your framing of the hard question of wholesomeness. I think that the full art of deciding when it’s appropriate to not think about something be better discussed via a bunch of examples, rather than trying to describe it in generalities. But the individual decisions are ones that you can make wholesomely or not, and I think that’s my current best guess approach for how to handle this. Setting something aside, when it feels right to do so, with some sadness that you don’t get to get to the bottom of it, feels wholesome. Blithely dismissing something as not worth attention typically feels unwholesome, because of something like a missing mood (and relatedly, it not being clear that you’re attending enough to notice if it were worth more attention).
There’s also a question about how this relates to social reality. I think that if you’re choosing not to look at something because it doesn’t feel like it’s worth the attention, then if someone else raises it (because it seems important to them) it’s natural to engage with some curiosity that you now—for the space of the conversation—get to look at the thing a bit. You may explain why you don’t normally think about it, but you’re not actively trying to suppress it. I think the more unwholesome versions of not looking at something are much more likely to try to actively avoid or shut the conversation down.