Is ignorance really bliss?
Ive been thinking about this lately and i believe this to be mostly true. I will give an example. Let's say a person has just been through a breakup. They are sad but told by friends something along the lines of "they are too good for them" or that "the partner is an idiot" etc, even if the partner has not truly done anything wrong. This will be believed by most, despite the truth that the partner doing the dumping infact judges the other to be insufficient in terms of relationship quality which is the unfavourable truth. This ignorance however is obviously comforting. The ability to believe such reassurance by friends and to ignore real truths is suggestively beneficial for the individuals happiness. I could give various examples of this, as I could imagine you could too when you watch and see how often people appear to lie to themselves. I don't believe ignorance is always a bad thing as it helps people to move on and be happier. What do you think, is ignorance bliss?
Comments (43)
However as Nietzsche observed, people can only handle so much truth. That life continues to exist is enabled by our capacity for self-delusion which includes being willfully unaware of real problems.
Either ignorance itself is joy-inducing or the truth is painful.
I don't think it's the former because investing emotions is mostly done on the basis of truth. For instance we hold back when given good news, asking ''really?'' Only upon being told that the good news is true do we enjoy the good fortune or fruits of our labor.
As for the latter, I think this is the curse of philosophy. Truth is hard to find and those that are within reach (crime, cheating, evil, catastrophes, climate change, etc) are just not the rainbow we're looking for. Perhaps this is pessimism talking but I've heard that optimists are commonly disappointed by reality.
So, I disagree that ignorance is bliss. Rather, knowledge is sorrow.
Life is unsatisfactory in many ways and sometimes one just doesn't need hourly updates on how unsatisfactory it is.
:smile:
2. "What you don't know can hurt you."
I agree with 2. A lot of our suffering comes from psycho-emotional stuff swirling around in our unconscious (beyond our field of internal awareness).
But I don't agree with 1. What we know about self and the world *can* hurt us, a great deal, particularly shortly after first coming to know it.
Then there is "invincible ignorance": Ignorance so firmly rooted, ignorance so well defended, ignorance so impervious to enlightenment, that nothing will ever get through to them. (It is my belief that Donald Trump is the exemplar of invincible ignorance in our time.)
Perhaps people who are ignorant through no fault of their own (innocent savages) are blissful. The rest of the ignorant have no excuse.
(For those who have forgotten, here is a list of the elements, presented by Prof. Thomas Lehrer, Department of Mathematics, Harvard University
Here is an interesting "long read" in The Guardian about denial and denialism.
Ignorance does not cause, or put one into 'denial', but denial and denialism can shift one solidly into ignorance. Why do people deny accepted truth? Like, "HIV causes AIDS"; or "Human beings are causing global climate change"; or "evolution explains how a myriad of specialized organisms arose"... and so on.
It might take a certain amount of psychoanalysis to determine why some people deny accepted fact. For instance, what is the motivation for denying the holocaust occurred? Something -- and I do not know what it is -- sends some people on a course from knowledge to doubt to denial to denialism. Get deeply enough into denial and one becomes ignorant about some aspects of reality. (But ignorance definitely is not a cause of denialism.)
No doubt, denialists who think HIV doesn't cause AIDS or that the US Government was responsible for 9/11 find comfort in their sealed off view of reality. They have "special access to the truth" which most people have been robbed of. For the denialist, most people are fools for accepting the commonly understood version of reality.
Denialists are more dangerous than the merely ignorant because they energetically defend their ignorance.
There is no attitude regarding relationships that correspond to truth: it's all about what we tell ourselves. So you might as well follow whatever path leads you to happiness.
A not particularly bright person can be easily distracted by simply constructed, cheaply produced, models of entertainment. Happy, perhaps, to watch many reruns of Disney films.
This is the conspiracy I heard on that. Some bearded guy in a cave on a yak had the sophistication to get around every highly evolved trillion dollar security protocols to achieve what was achieved on that day, and ALL during this:
" Operation Northern Vigilance, was a NORAD operation which involved deploying fighter aircraft to locations in Alaska and Northern Canada. In order to simulate a hijacking situation including terrorist pilots.[1] The operation was a response to a Russian exercise, in which long-range bombers were dispatched to Russia's high north. The operation was one part simulation, one part real world. It was immediately called off after NORAD received word from NEADS that the Federal Aviation Administration had evidence of a hijacking. All simulated information (so-called "injects") were purged from computer screens at NORAD headquarters in Colorado. On receiving news of the attacks, the Russians promptly canceled their exercise as well." (wiki)
When exercises such as the NORAD one are carried out two teams are formed. A red team and a blue team. One team is attacker and the other defender.
During the actual attack security had been stood down prior. Security NEVER gets stood down whether their are exercises or not.
All above are facts (although "caves and yaks" are for theatrical and sarcastic value).
So to further examine the red teem vs blue team exercise protocol, it seems obvious, therefore, that on that day the defender team was STOOD DOWN.
It is admitted as such, in that security was stood down.
So what are the benefits for this?
Keep everyone in fear - great for keeping those tax funds being increased towards security business which ultimately is used to control a nation's own citizens and not to so much defend from other nations.
Other nation's citizens do not contribute the sort of money taxes do to the military industrial government. complex. (yes, it's a thing)
If you do not buy the government explanation of 911 you must believe in a flat earth and the holocaust by the Nazis did not happen.
"National Reconnaissance Office drill
Aside from military exercises, a National Reconnaissance Office drill was being conducted on September 11, 2001. In a simulated event, a small aircraft would crash into one of the towers of the agency's headquarters after experiencing a mechanical failure. The NRO is the branch of the Department of Defense in charge of spy satellites. According to its spokesman Art Haubold: "No actual plane was to be involved -- to simulate the damage from the crash, some stairwells and exits were to be closed off, forcing employees to find other ways to evacuate the building." He further explained: "It was just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an aircraft crashing into our facility, as soon as the real world events began, we canceled the exercise." Most of the agency's personnel were sent home after the attacks."
And so during this drill the defender team is stood down?
Who really, therefore, WAS the attack team?
The ultimate attack team certainly wasn't in "stood down" mode.
Wow! What a coincidence, eh? Our bearded "Yak-back rider" knew(?) of this exercise for the same day.
We all have heard many ridiculous conspiracy theories. This empowers a few grandstanders to make sweeping jestures about what all is true or not true.
Liberal media. The "me too" movement. Russia muddling in the election. These are theories about conspiracy.
True ignorance, not denial, can be seen in Alzheimer's patients and the mental retarded. They are blissfully happy, they don't have the capacity to worry.
We all have heard many ridiculous conspiracy theories"
I would say, in my case, I read them because there is something drowing me to them, yet to not wrongly concider them "true" or "right" without serious pondering and research first. you may also never "find the answer" or learn the "truth" or what was "right". but it dosent hurt to know them. or is it?
It does make feel a bit paranoid and that cant be good. but I never jump train that quickly. or a metaphor I enjoy better; "I feel obligeted to sit on the fence until I know without question witch side has the greenest grass. and if I jump prematurly to discover I was wrong I hope I acknowledge that I was wrong and climp back on the fence and ponder some more."
a little light relief, enjoy! Oh well, don't enjoy! I can't paste a song from this Mac :lol: If curious it was going to be 'I saw a UFO but nobody believed me by Sneaky Sound System....
The thing about 9/11 is that it WAS a conspiracy, and the conspiracy was successful. Occam's razor directs us toward the bin Laden directed plot, rather than those devious devils' plot in Washington.
Remember, this was the second attack on the World Trade Towers--the first being in 1993. In that attack, the intent was to fell the north tower into the south tower. Some engineers speculated that it could have worked. (They didn't wish to provide details on how to do it better.) The conspirators killed 6 people and injured over 1000. Had it worked, many thousands would likely have died. Al Qaeda provided training for this attack. The World Trade Center was selected as a representative of US economic power.
The attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK was also a successful conspiracy--planned by Americans against Americans in America. It was in retaliation for the attack on an oddball bunch of Americans in the Branch Davidian facility in Waco, TX in April of 1993. Whether the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol and Firearms (a branch of the US Treasury) was conspiring to bring about what happened, don't know. Why that particular federal building was blown up, don't know.
There have been other conspiracies to do various (usually violent) deeds. In 1970 a small group blew up Stirling Hall at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The Army had a research center in the building, and the explosion was a protest against the War in Vietnam. The conspirators had tried to blow up the building when no one was there, but unfortunately 1 graduate student was there and was killed. He didn't have anything to do with the Army research program.
Imagine living in England, what with all the IRA bombs that were blown up there during the 1970s - 90s.
Another example of successful conspiracies.
I'm not sure the US Intelligence Agencies are capable of thinking up, planning, and pulling off a devilishly ingenious dastardly conspiracy. We have too many means to crush which ever group of bastards are annoying us. The annoying bastards, on the other hand, have to work within extremely limited means -- they have to be fiendishly clever. And they have been.
I haven't bothered to look too closely at the conspiracy stuff, the other factors are enough to persuade me that there is a horde of cowardly grunting rock chucking goat molesting bomb making bearded lunatics that may seek to liberate my bonce from my torso! That it might be a small mercy and put me out of my misery isn't the point :lol: .....if certain savages choose to observe the teachings of a demented paedophile from the 6th Century, that is their prerogative, but they ought to keep their primitive nonsense to themselves. It isn't unreasonable to expect them to observe the same laws as the rest of us. I don't like materialism, but I'm not going to go on a crusade against those that do worship at the temple of Mammon...
you have the entire puzzle-picture infront of you and you reach the highest transcendence...or some bullshit like that. I dont think it will happen :)
:up:
A fertiliser bomb in a truck could not have caused that sort of damage. But hey! These conspirators take great pains in deception. That is why they usually succeed. The use of patsies is an old tried and true playbook. The truck blew, along with the far lager devices in synchronicity.