ignorance is bliss?

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Do you agree?

Is it true that the more you know, the wiser you get, the less happy you become?

or do you think being wiser would help you deal with things more rationally (things become less exciting all the time, but less prone to fallouts)?

or do you feel that happiness and knowledge not really related?

i dunno. (so yay!)

― ken c (ken c), Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:12 (eighteen years ago) link

Yes but it is a rubbish bliss.

― Sociah T Azzahole (blueski), Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:15 (eighteen years ago) link

Right now, as ever, I'd rather know.

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:15 (eighteen years ago) link

can i be the first pedant to point out that the full quotation (attributed to thomas gray) is: "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."

which puts a rather different spin on things.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:15 (eighteen years ago) link

would you prefer to be clever and miserable or thick and happy? i suspect most people would choose whichever one they are already.

― emsk ( emsk), Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:17 (eighteen years ago) link

i think i wilfully ignore the news, more and more, these days. it's not very blissful, but you'd top yourself if you knew *everything*. so i go on in my bubble, where the biggest things i have to worry about are money, mortality, friendship -- the little things.

― N_RQ, Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:20 (eighteen years ago) link

Depends on how much you an actually affect/change/deal with the situation.

Things which you can actually do something about, I'd rather know. Things which make you feel utterly powerless, I think I might rather not know. I don't know. I, too, tend to try to avoid the news, etc. But I don't know if this is healthy or not. I think that with regards to that, the less you know, the more people can exploit you.

― Luminiferous Aether (kate), Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:23 (eighteen years ago) link

the more we know, the more we can do to make things better. it's as simple as that. no offence, but i think adopting a head-in-the-sand/micro-bubble viewpoint is deeply unhelpful.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:25 (eighteen years ago) link

nb: i'm not saying i have any answers or solutions. i'm just saying: we need to strive for understanding.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:26 (eighteen years ago) link

yes but does being helpful necessarily make you HAPPY??!

― ken c (ken c), Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:27 (eighteen years ago) link

trying to do something, no matter how small or crap it might be, makes me feel happier, yes.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:28 (eighteen years ago) link

no, but being helpful can make you less of a solipsistic ignoramus.

― barbarian cities (jaybob3005), Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:30 (eighteen years ago) link

i would recommend that anyone who is interested in the concept of altruism/happiness/the link therein reads this. it's ever so slightly glib in parts, but astonishingly clear-headed.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:31 (eighteen years ago) link

would you prefer to be clever and miserable or thick and happy?

I'd rather be clever AND happy. Which is fortunate, since I'm rarely happier than when I'm learning stuff.

― Come Back Johnny B (Johnney B), Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:31 (eighteen years ago) link

I don't think being more knowledgeable or clever or wise makes you more miserable - I think some of these things can gain you friends and give you more job options, which are generally good things, and I don't know where the bad comes from. I guess there are people who mistrust or dislike cleverness, but they seem few in comparison to those who value it.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:52 (eighteen years ago) link

Isn't it a double egded sword? Ignorance can be bliss, but (self)knowledge can help you out of misery (and back into happiness).

― nathalie's pocket revolution (stevie nixed), Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:55 (eighteen years ago) link

I'm proof that you can be thick and unhappy btw. ;-)

― nathalie's pocket revolution (stevie nixed), Thursday, 1 September 2005 10:55 (eighteen years ago) link

Ignorance is fine until you find out that everyone else knew except you.

― Mädchen (Madchen), Thursday, 1 September 2005 11:02 (eighteen years ago) link

i think learning is bliss, so in a way ignorance is bliss because it means there is more and more to learn. you have to know you're ignorant though. i wish i'd worked this out 10 years ago when i first started uni, i really only realised it when i was almost at the end of my first degree so it seems like i wasted some of my blissful ignorance time.

― gem (trisk), Thursday, 1 September 2005 11:04 (eighteen years ago) link

i guess some knowledge etc. can gain you job options and stuff and that can be good provided these are the knowledge that you'd like to utilise in your work etc.

i'm less certain about friends as to whether being knowledgable or clever or wise necessarily gain you more friends.. perhaps it does. if in the sense that having the wiseness to be courteous and kind or something, but then again these are the things that do not really necessarily come from knowledge. ("it comes from the heart innit" if you want to be corny about it).

― ken c (ken c), Thursday, 1 September 2005 11:06 (eighteen years ago) link

I think wisdom has it's limits...Those scenes in Groundhog Day illustrate how if your life was extended indefinitely, and you picked up a lot of knowledge, it wouldn't in itself make you any happier.

― Bob Six (bobbysix), Thursday, 1 September 2005 11:07 (eighteen years ago) link

Its limits even...There was a good published earlier this year by a LSE lecturer on how society could work to promote happiness. There are some lectures on his webpage

― Bob Six (bobbysix), Thursday, 1 September 2005 11:12 (eighteen years ago) link

I thought this would be about Logged Out.

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Thursday, 1 September 2005 13:24 (eighteen years ago) link

i would recommend that anyone who is interested in the concept of altruism/happiness/the link therein reads...

grimly, i appreciate baggini too, i subscribe to his >a href="http://www.philosophersnet.com/<magazine>/a<. i've just picked this book up but I haven't read it yet. at the risk of appearing glib meself, aristotle thought about this question, right? eudaimoneia is bliss: a human life that develops happily by exercising reason to discern a moral purpose beyond fear, emotion and ignorance.

there's a sense in which knowledge and wisdom aren't equivalent to one another. if i've got it right, aristotle thought that wisdom is the 'common sense' idea that life is about happiness, so working out what that really means for us as individuals should make living more and more exciting, not less.

― angle of dateh, Thursday, 1 September 2005 15:59 (eighteen years ago) link

fuck it, i typed in those < tags in so carefully.

― angle of dateh, Thursday, 1 September 2005 16:03 (eighteen years ago) link

knowledge is power(fully depressing)!

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Thursday, 1 September 2005 16:13 (eighteen years ago) link

i think the woman next to me is proof that ignorance is bliss

― Dr. Glen Y. Abreu (dr g), Thursday, 1 September 2005 16:14 (eighteen years ago) link

as ive sung for years - denial is a girls best friend

― sunny successor (he hates my guts, we had a fight) (katharine), Thursday, 1 September 2005 16:15 (eighteen years ago) link

I like and want to know everything I can about every topic...except if I had a fatal disease. If that occurred, I would prefer to live out my days not knowing I am soon gonna be fish bait.

― Wiggy (Wiggy), Friday, 2 September 2005 02:24 (eighteen years ago) link

ignorance aint' bliss, but sometimes the world is a BIIIT too much with us

― kingfish 'doublescoop' moose tracks (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 2 September 2005 02:32 (eighteen years ago) link

twelve years pass...

Bliss is not checking the news, stocks, or btc since Friday.

― calstars, Wednesday, 27 December 2017 22:18 (six years ago) link

The original saying was "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise", which seems much more nuanced and balanced than the thread title, which reduces it to a blanket endorsement of ignorance as invariably blissful. Which is bunkum.

― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, 27 December 2017 22:25 (six years ago) link

+1
But i think both readings are ok

― calstars, Wednesday, 27 December 2017 22:29 (six years ago) link

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