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As a former evangelical I can tell you that ignorance is bliss until you make enough Stoopid life decisions based on ignorance such that the pain of changing becomes less than the pain of not changing.
It's an age old question....people have thought about it since biblical times, people still think about it ala the Matrix. It goes like this.
The question is concerned with either or...that is, true/false, yes/no. One is right, and one is wrong, necessarily.
Given this;
I pose the question, is ignorance bliss or is the truth always better? The truth doesn't lead to bliss. This is stipulated by the question. Ignorance is ignorant (that is to say, he/she who is ignorant is ignorant of his/her ignorance). In terms of the "known/unknown" paradigm, it is an unknown unknown.
You have the power to keep that bliss intact in another human being, by causing him/her to be ignorant of what the truth is, or indeed, that there exists a truth other than what she knows. This truth is in no way necessary for his/her functioning...he/she functions just as well, and even better, in ignorance.
Do you interrupt his/her bliss with the truth, when that truth is unnecessary to him/her? Or do you let him/her live in ignorance?
Keep in mind, it is your decision. You can't offer him/her any insight into your dilemma, otherwise you break his/hers ignorance, thus effectively making the decision to side with the truth.
This question, put another way, goes like this. Is human happiness more important to you than reality? If faced with an either or choice, (lets say, in a brain surgery gone wrong, your surgeon can only save your life by cutting off blood vessels that would lead to destroying the regions of your brain that enable you to be happy, or to be capable of perceiving reality) which blood vessels do you want him to cut off?
Reality vs happiness?
Bliss vs truth?
Red Pill vs Blue Pill?
Do you eat the apple, or do you choose not to, Adam?
It's hard to lie. I think you will be trading your happiness for somebody else's. The truth will set you free
Also like someone said happiness is transitory and so is pain and sorrow It's not like that person is gonna feel the same way about the truth forever. They will adapt.
Truth is an immutable logical constant. Happiness is a nebulous and variable perception of a living organism's momentary condition. They are not in the same arena and can't even be discussed together.
When someone tells me about some negative something that was said about me, I prefer not to know it. My mother would say, "But, don't you want to know the truth?" No, I don't, when it is something I don't need to know. The truth will not set me free. Free from what?
If truth doesn't have a good purpose, then it's better to be ignorant.
I always state this example. A wife and a husband have a good life and love each other (or at least it feels that way to them) and then one of them has an affair.
If the wife doesn't know about the affair, she would keep living a good life, believing whatever she believes (that she has a great life and a loving husband).
If the wife knows. it would be difficult for her to overcome the feelings, even if she forgives the husband, there will always be this difficulty in feelings between them
in such case, truth serves her NO good purpose whatsoever
and it is so much better to be ignorant of her husband's actions and to continue her blissful life
on the other hand, if the wife is unhappy with the marriage and is looking for the excuse to end it, then yes, the truth would be useful to her and she should know about it
or
another example
a mother calls a son and he doesn't answer the phone because he doesn't want to talk
when she calls back and he finally answers and she asks: why didn't you pick up the phone?
It would be MUCH better to say: I didn't hear it. Then mother feels fine. And the son feels fine.
But if he tells the truth, it does nothing EXCEPT to cause the mother pain.
a mother calls a son and he doesn't answer the phone because he doesn't want to talk
when she calls back and he finally answers and she asks: why didn't you pick up the phone?
It would be MUCH better to say: I didn't hear it. Then mother feels fine. And the son feels fine.
But if he tells the truth, it does nothing EXCEPT to cause the mother pain.
The truth would still have been better than a lie that the mother might have suspected was a lie. He could have said "I knew it was you and that you would call back, and that wasn't a good time for us to talk."
You refer to a social truth about an interpersonal relationship, which is already a damaged arena of jeopardy if a truth needs to be obscured. A perfect philosophy cannot be reached from an imperfect starting point.
From what I've experienced as a truth seeker,the ignorant around me seem to be having a better time of things...at least for now. Perhaps in the end the truth is better...
No coming into consciousness without pain, Jung. And, people who have a strong desire to preserve their ignorance about things, their life, their stories, whatever else, are indeed a lot more superficially "comfortable" than those who dig around a lot in their psyches. Maybe.
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