Is ignorance bliss? Or is the truth always better? (religion, purpose, life)
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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?
One need only take a gander at your typical religious fanatic. Not even a fanatic, per se, but even someone, like maybe a Mormon or a JW, who absolutely, 100% believes wholesale in their church's dogma.
They have this wonderfully glazed, benign, bovine-like glaze in their eyes, as they think that their place in Heaven is secure and that God's shining coutenance is radiating down upon them always.
It's kind of a psychological placebo effect, I reckon.
I have at times envied them. It would be kinda nice to go through life in a warm & fuzzy state of Denial like that.
I sometimes wish I could.
But I simply find it impossible to throw my mind away and subscribe to the superstitious nonsense that is called religion.
Indeed, Ignorance is most often bliss for vast majority of people.
Many don't like the discomfort of cognitive dissonance. Many choose selective retention, storage, and study of information that conforms and reinforces a specific worldview.
An excerpt I saved from a book had a vignette that explains this well:
In his book Lila, author and philosopher Robert Pirsig tells of sailing into port at Cleveland, when because of misreading the chart he believed he was actually some 20 miles up shore in a completely different harbor. Yet the landscape seemed to tie in with the chart – until he remembered having discounted discrepancies between the map and the land, convincing himself that changes had been made to the shoreline since the chart was produced.
How could he have made such a mistake in the daylight? Didn’t he have his eyes open? Writing about himself in the third person Pirsig states:
It was a parable for students of scientific objectivity. Wherever the chart disagreed with his observations he rejected the observation and followed the chart. Because of what his mind thought it knew, it had built up a static filter, an immune system, that was shutting out all information that did not fit. Seeing is not believing, Believing is Seeing.
If this were just an individual phenomenon it would not be so serious. But it is a huge cultural phenomenon too and it is very serious. We build up whole cultural intellectual patterns based on past “facts” which are extremely selective. When a new fact comes in that does not fit the pattern we do not through out the pattern. We throw out the fact. A contradictory fact has to keep hammering and hammering sometimes for centuries, before maybe one or two people will see it. And these one or two have to start hammering on others for a long time before they see it too.
Another example explains it in scientific way:
Only 5% of People Think
In an educational study people were given a new concept (such as the earth is round) and asked to believe it, which resulted in them setting aside some things they already believe. It required a paradigm shift.
50% believed it immediately – without thinking.
30% didn’t believe it, immediately – without thinking.
15% wanted to wait awhile while they make up their minds, but asked for no clarification and no further information.
5% analyzed all the details and finally came to a conclusion.
The results of the study go like this, It is estimated that 5% of the people think, 15% of the people think they think, and 80% of the people would rather die than think.
One more layer I would add is that of ones conscience how does one weigh the repercussions and consequences (health/livelihood etc...) of bringing 'reality' (truth, as one knows it) to other peoples lives. If one has a conscience than it may require action/decision on an individuals part to 'right' something or expose something.
Think about whistleblowers and how and why, so many expose their fields / industry practices etc... only when they are well past suffering repercussions / ramifications or have already been caught doing something criminally and then do a 'tell all' book.
There are countless songs which convey the conundrum when the issue revolves around Love. A good example is lyrics to "Are You Lonesome Tonight" by Elvis Presley.
"Honey you lied when you said you loved me. And I had no cause to doubt you. But I'd rather go on hearing your lies than to go on living without you..."
People will likely have different opinions about ignorance being bliss depending on the realm and the relation to themselves.
Is ignorance bliss? Or is the truth always better?
Actually, this can be discovered experimentally pretty quickly. Try giving your friends/neighbors/relatives the unvarnished truth about what you think of their offspring.
Well, we want to be happy. We also want to be good. Then again, we want to be successful, respected, competent, good looking, and of course have everyone around us be punctual.
Now you want to know the truth too?
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