Ignorance is bliss

[Wishfire 2]

Sure, everyone knows the saying, "Ignorance is bliss." But where does this saying come from? What does it really mean?

 

Personall, I find it quite the opposite. Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is rage. (That may not be the best description, but that's how I feel.)

 

I don't know everything. God knows, no one does. But I don't like not knowing something, especially if it's something that has meaning to me. I don't feel bliss not knowing something. I get pissed off, because I want to know, and s\many times I simply can't. I seems to me that ignorance s a source of stress.

 

Sure, there are people out there that are ignorant to something or another, and they are happy being ignorant to whatever they don't know. Maybe to them the phrase "ignorane is bliss" is true. But not to me.

 

So does anyone know where this phrase came from? Does anyone know what this phrase might actually mean? Because I refuse to accept it at face value.

[Stephen of Borg 2]

it means you do something without knowing the consequences. you're happy because you don't know bad could happen, aka ignorance is bliss.

[Wishfire 2]

it means you do something without knowing the consequences. you're happy because you don't know bad could happen, aka ignorance is bliss.

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I don't see it that way. If I do something, the consequences are always on my mind, even if I can't always consider every single consequence. For my, ignorance is torture.

[Stephen of Borg 2]

but how can ignorance be torture if you don't even know that you're ignorant about somthing

 

another way of saying it is that what you do not know cannot hurt you

[Mr.Picard 12]

I believe this phrase is from George Orwell's novel "1984", or it's at least used very much in it. And I often find myself agreeing with it - like Gamera said, things I don't know cannot hurt me.

[Theunicornhunter 2]

It's part of a poem by Thomas Gray

 

here's a link http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem884.html

 

It's a complex poem but the gist I get from it - is that we're best not knowing what future has in store for us' particularly when we're young we should enjoy our lives.

 

I think of the movie Charly based on Flowers for Algernon - an interesting book if you haven't read it. If you have, when was Charly happiest - when he was developmentally disadvantaged or when he was super intelligent?

 

Think about - are you happy believing your spouse loves you - do you really want to know he/she is cheating? Do you really want to know what people say about you behind your back? Many times I've seen kids doing stuff - like skateboarding in the middle of the road and thought - do parents know what their kids do?

 

In my own life - if someone had told me when I was eighteen how my life would turn out - I dont' think I could have handled it - as it is I just lived through one day at a time - 'cause I didn't know any better.

[Validus 0]

To really understand the meaning of "Ignorance is bliss" one need look no further then the character Cypher from The Matrix. Cypher would rather live in the Matrix (the lie) rather then in the real world because he is a selfish person who would rather have a comfortable illusion then an uncomfortable reality, what Morpheus called the deasert of the real.

 

This is my contention with Theists. It has been my observation that most Christians, Muslims and Hindus if they could know- for certain if God exists...would rather be kept in the dark. Like USSAcclaim, for them life without a deity becomes meaningless...an erroneous view up one side and down the other.

[Wishfire 2]

I still don't understand. If I'm ignorant of something, I'm not happy about it. To be happy about it, I'd have to know that I don't know about it, which means I'd know something of it. Therefore I wouldn't be entirely ignorant of it.

 

Of course not everyone's the same, but if I don't know something about something, then I'm neutral about it. I'm not happy or sad. Or angry, or whatever. What reason would I have to feel anything about something that I'm completely unaware of?