Is ignorance so bad?

[Zion]

Ignorance is bliss.

[John Paul]

Only until what your ignoring starts to effect your life negatively

[Willie]

It’s a matter of perspective, and changes depending on the context. Ignorance can be blissful, and ignorance can be severely damaging.

[Carl-Richard]

If you don't want to keep running into the same walls over and over again – yes.

[Mason Riggle]

"Ignorance is bliss, but only for the ignorant. For the rest of us it's a right pain in the arse." - Ricky Gervais

[Tim R]

Every coin has two sides

[DefinitelyNotARobot]

1 hour ago, Mason Riggle said:

Ignorance is bliss, but only for the ignorant

This! Yes, from an ignorant perspective it might seem like ignorance is the best strategy, but once you transcend your ignorance you realize that it was the problem all along. It's only blissful as long as you don't know any better. If people knew better, they wouldn't call it blissful.

Just look at a heroin addict. Does that seem like a fun life to you? Does it seem like a "blissful" existence? Well they do feel blissful... while they're high. So why not just shoot up heroin then? It's easier than to take this spiritual journey, isn't it? What even keeps you from shooting up heroin right now? It's awareness. You are aware of the fact that shooting up heroin isn't going to make your life better (I hope so). It's not going to make you blissful. You'll eventually come down from the high and then you'll feel worse than before. You will start chasing that high. Again and again and again. You might loose your job, your home, your family and end up having to sleep on the streets. You'll have to start begging for money, but people will just look at you with disgust, knowing that you'll just spend it on drugs. If you are lucky and you live in the right country you'll get arrested and put into some sort of rehabilitation program where you'll get some help, but if you are unlucky you'll probably just die in some random backalley. You'll be "just another" homeless person that overdosed. "Just another" statistic.

If you call that bliss (and you could make the argument that everything is perfect no matter what, but I'd rather not go that deep right now, I think we should establish a more foundational understanding of ignorance first) then sure, ignorance is bliss. But I don't think anybody would want that for themselves, or anybody else for that matter.

I am privileged. I know better. If I was born at the wrong time in the wrong place to the wrong family and if I had met the wrong kinds of people and made the wrong kinds of decisions, my life could've easily ended up being like this story. I am simply lucky enough to have been given the awareness that shooting up heroin isn't a good idea. Others weren't that lucky, because they didn't have the opportunity to learn what most people learn. A lot of people get stuck in this kind of lifestyle and never find their way out, because they simply don't know any better.

And just to make my point very clear let's take a look at some actual example.

Listen to her and just observe in what kind of ignorant environment she grew up in. Here are a couple of "quotes of ignorance" just to show you the different ways in which ignorance hurts people:

"My family kind of like disowned me because I chose to hang out with black people" I mean i don't have to explain that one, racism is one of the most common forms of ignorance. Her family played a big part in her becoming this way, because they cared more about their racist ideas than about their own daughter.

"Then I met my boys dad, he had me prostituting when I was pregnant, he didn't give a fuck about me." A lack of empathy is another form of ignorance. You could do such a thing to another person only if you were extremely ignorant.

"When I started prostituting the pimp got me smoking crack" "I was 14 when I started smoking crack." The pimp took advantage of a young girl that didn't know any better and ended up manipulating her into prostituting herself and doing hard drugs. I mean do I even have to say anything about that?

And those are just 3 quotes from 1 person. Just imagine how much more pain ignorance has caused to people. Every single one of us.

[Scholar]

Ignorance is suffering. Suffering for everyone who you turn a blind eye to. If you ignore the suffering of the animals in the factory farms, nature will make it so causing this suffering will be your downfall. The german people choose to ignore what was happening right before their eyes, and nature deemed it rightful that the german people ought to be destroyed. This is what happens when you are ignorant.

 

Yesterday a tornado destroyed several villages in the czech republic:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57605651

 

You might think "Oh what a tragedy!". But this is not actually true. What is tragic is that all of those individuals who now suffer, choose to ignore the suffering of others, the suffering of nature and all it's inhabitants. They were convinced that they could live their lifes blindly, to only focus on themselves and that everything would be okay as long as they take care of themselves.

 

Nature will cause a lot more suffering to humanity, because humanity chooses to be ignorant and complacent. Only through suffering will we understand how important universal concern is. If you choose to ignore the suffering of your neighbours children, do not be surprised when your own child gets killed in a school shooting. That is the direct consequence of your ignorance and complacency.

If you watch by as trillions of beings are enslaved, tortured and killed, what do you think the consequence is going to be? Why would nature have mercy with you, if you cannot show any mercy to your brothers and sisters?

 

 

People live in such comfort today that they need to be reminded what it means to truly suffer.

[RobertZ]

Sometimes knowledge can cause intellectual suffering. Moments of learning that caused me to feel the pain of my ignorance made me really feel this sentiment, “ignorance is bliss.” I wished I had never learned any of [this]. If I hadn’t learned [this], I might feel lost and confused at some points in my life—but I would avoid the intense intellectual pain of more acute identification with my thoughts. another aspect of knowledge is simplicity of life. Panic might motivate me to a greater or lesser degree, even if I learn more.

Edited June 27, 2021 by RobertZ