When Ignorance isn’t Bliss
We hear the phrase “Ignorance is Bliss” thrown around a lot these days. Inundated with headlines, tweets, advertisements, and articles, the modern human has to constantly deal with an egregious amount of information. Naturally, when we’re feeling overwhelmed, we seek comfort. “Ignorance is Bliss” offers a pleasant escape from the discomfort of difficult truths.
I fried up a couple of eggs for breakfast the other day. I nearly dropped the bottle of olive oil as I held it over the pan; the damn thing was greased up like a sunbathing grandpa’s shiny backside. As I wiped down the bottle, I glanced at the nutrition label and thought damn, that’s a whole lot of calories. I turned to my roommate and told him: “Dude, you would not believe how many calories are in this bottle of olive oil!”. He put his hands up, shook his head twice, and told me he refused to check nutrition labels because “Ignorance is Bliss”. Mind you, this is a roommate with whom I exercise regularly, someone who prioritizes health and fitness.
What he said got me thinking — is that really how the phrase works? Perhaps further inspection is warranted here.
Let’s define truth as a fact about the world. This could be as simple as which day of the week today is. Ignorance, then, would be a state in which you are unaware of a given truth. Bliss is happiness (let’s keep it simple).
Practically speaking, we tend to use this phrase with respect to truths that are uncomfortable to accept — things that might make us unhappy. “Ignorance is Bliss” would then mean that when we are unaware of discomforting truths, they cannot make us unhappy. It’s not that unawareness fills us with happiness; rather, it simply shields us from unhappiness.
Surely there are tons of truths that we are blissfully unaware of at any given moment. My leftover spinach could be spoiled. My neighbor could be a secret agent. My ex could be with someone else. I haven’t got a clue, and it doesn’t matter, because my present happiness is shielded by my ignorance of these truths. This “shielding effect” is pretty easy to grasp and hard to deny — how could you possibly be let down by things you don’t know about? We sometimes even use this maxim in our dealings with others — parents hide unsettling truths from children, bosses withhold information from employees, friends guard secrets from each other — all usually with good intentions.
But what happens when we hide truths from ourselves?
By extension, we imagine that we’re shielding ourselves in the same way we do others, protecting our fragile happiness from the unsettling reality of discomforting truths. Try as we might, this doesn’t work — allow me to illustrate with an example, then attempt to establish with a concept.
Nowadays, an exorbitant amount of Americans are accumulating or repaying student loan debt. Debt is a cold type of subjugation — one in which the slave-master need not employ daily cruelties to enforce their ownership; no, ownership is unquestionable, the debts already accrued.
Debt is uncomfortable to think about. Nobody wants to be constantly reminded of the anvil hovering above their head every time they buy a latte. So when it comes to debt, we ignore the truth, desperately attempting to force the thought to the other side of the unawareness shield. We’ve got such desperate faith in the unawareness shield, too, like a kid at an arcade claw machine channeling every ounce of willpower into his fingertips as he pushes the engage button.
But it rarely works. Maybe for a short time, just long enough to get us through the moment, but the truth lingers, and as long as it lingers, it affects us. As we’re well aware, student loan debt won’t disappear just because it isn’t being acknowledged— frankly, it’ll just get worse.
The issue is that ignoring is not the same as ignorance. Ignoring is an action; ignorance is a state. By definition, when we ignore something, we acknowledge its existence — how can you ignore that which you can’t identify?
My roommate and I started tracking our calories together. We both sort of realized that it was something we had to do to get where we wanted to be, even if it meant confronting some of our long-time eating habits. As long as we hid from the truth, we knew we’d be stuck in the same place.
Honestly, I think we’re all already aware of this on some level. Nobody ever needed a Medium article to teach them how to live — that’s the job of experience and reflection. Still, we’re infinitely forgetful, so every now and then, it helps to be reminded. Hopefully this piece does just that.
“where ignorance is bliss, ’Tis folly to be wise.”
- Thomas Gray
