Ignorance is bliss?

What is meant by this? Is this statement true? If so, how, if not, why not?

On the basic adage that ignorance is bliss ,yes I wish to deny this is the case.

I just think you are making some very wide sweeping assumptions . What if someone is involved in a struggle of some sort, any sort any struggle and their lack of knowledge or specific experience is what is keeping them stuck in a quagmire. Is this ignorance blissful? If ignorance is not knowing something how can we assume that the excellent and useful things that could be enhancing someones existence that they are ignorant of is blissful. I understand the the saying(ignorance is bliss) its as old as sliced bread. I just don't think its not a universal law or a legitimate way to discount the actions of billions of people who are seeking their own fulfillment through a myriad of different approaches.


This is one of your premises. One who is happy, and secure, would it not follow that they no longer seek knowledge in these regards? You have said yourself,

No it would not follow. A simple example would be someone who takes up golf. They practice and develop their skills and then golf a new best score. That individual can be exceptionally happy and then throw themselves into doing more work and developing their skills ever further to improve their skills even more so that they can improve the score again. This is a very simple example to refute your premise and you could substitute in any number of different endeavors.


Ignorance can indeed be bliss. In America there will be people who benefit greatly from lots of brutal foreign policy. Many Americans will live prosperous and full existences without understanding what types of policy initiatives have been implemented they they where complicit in. It happens. On the other side of the coin there are millions of people in third world countries who don't realize they are being bent over by the IMF and that while their natural resources are being extracted that their are lots of technological advances in water purification, agriculture , health care and in education that they could be benefiting from. Their entire existence is a struggle and they are to a great extent kept ignorant purposefully in order to benefit others.

When people where walking from Somalia into other African countries last year it was not in search of freedom it was in search of food and security. I am certain there are many among the survivors who saw 75,000 of there tribesman and family members who starved to death along the way who would gladly compromise their freedoms to for a little happiness or security. And no saying they where seeking to be free from hunger is just not a legitimate argument. We need food to live. We can not be free from this necessity. We must struggle with nature and with one another to meet these basic needs. This brings me back to my original refutation that freedom is just one among many dynamic ideas or tools that we will use or compromise with to fulfill our basic needs.

And what of the philosopher and the scientists? Ignorance is a brute, a vial state of being to be avoided at all costs even if it brings distress. In that distress experienced lies happiness and security for the philosopher and the scientists. The seeking provides a purpose that brings fulfillment. The rewords are incremental and not constant because the nature of exploration is to continue uncovering information until there is empirical proofs and then those empirical proofs are used to explore new potentialities.

So the saying Ignorance is Bliss can be used in specific situations to regard certain individuals or groups state of being but it will be being done from a biased point of view. The user of such a statement would be assuming a mantle of being omniscient and being able to transcend the human condition of relativism.

I would like to make the assumption/assertion that the phrase finds it's truth in relation to knowledge-of-being? I do not do so convinced that I will be proven right, I do so in blind faith, also because we need to have an end or goal so as not to be sidetracked by frivolous pursuits. If you prefer a different point, please make a suggestion, but we do indeed need a point of departure, and this is the one I suggest. Although, not thoroughly convinced once again, I would like to assert that it is precisely knowledge-of-being that determines ones happiness, thus the point's relativity. I do not know where we will end up, or if this is an acceptable path. If it is not, could you please point out it's irrelevance?

The phrase /assertion is not irrelevant it is just not a universal truth. It is an assumption that you are free to make whenever you would like. For me it is just difficult to take someone seriously who is actually trying to use assumptions to put forth sweeping philosophical premises with no logical proofs or empirical evidence to support them. To me the phrase is better used as a rhetorical phrase to be used when dealing with specific circumstances and even then it would be being used as an assumption.

I apologize if I offended you with my past posts. I appreciate the forums and everyone's willingness to share their ideas. The more I learn the less I seem to know. Perhaps it was some philosopher who first used this phrase that ignorance was bliss as a quip in pontificating on this dynamic of being trapped or driven by the necessity to keep trying to accumulate knowledge as it becomes a sense of responsibility. There is a point when individuals often have to choose weather or not to proceed when it comes to dealing with difficult information that can have a crushing affect of one's spirit. I could see the sense of hopelessness that can accompany to much information make someone tempted to embrace this concept.

Then I assert that through a knowledge of being, "ignorance is bliss" becomes a universal truth, since being is indeed relevant at every moment, and has the power to trivialize or give meaning to any and all things, any bliss derived without the knowledge of being is merely a whimsical state of ignorance.

Also, I wish to argue here on behalf of myself and my own knowledge since I do in fact believe that self-evident, logically progressive arguments can be achieved, but since you seem to think that I have no basis for my line of thought and disregard most of anything I say, I share this quote by Gordon Marino posted in the New York Times that alludes to my theory.

Nor can we fathom the idea that the happy wanderer, who is all smiles and has accomplished everything on his or her self-fulfillment list, is, in fact, a case of despair. But while Kierkegaard would have agreed that happiness and melancholy are mutually exclusive, he warns, “Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.”

There is also this quote for Kierkegaard in the article:

An individual in despair despairs over something. So it seems for a moment, but only for a moment; in the same moment the true despair or despair in its true form shows itself. In despairing over something, he really despaired over himself, and now he wants to be rid of himself. For example, when the ambitious man whose slogan is “Either Caesar or nothing” does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it … precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he cannot bear to be himself.

followed up by Gordan saying:

In America, there is endless talk of the importance of having a dream — that is, a dreamed-up self that you will to become: a millionaire, a surgeon, or maybe the next Dylan or George Clooney. But master of suspicion that Kierkegaard was, he goes on to note that while the man who has failed to become Caesar would have been in seventh heaven if he had realized his dream, that state would have been just as despairing in another way — because in that giddy self-satisfied condition, he would never have come to grasp his true self.

The article is called "Kierkegaard on the Couch" if you wish to google it.

I have been happy and sad and in both times have turned to poetry and introspective ramblings in order to try and create some meaning.

You don't have be a writer for a magazine or an existentialist with moving prose to make assertions or assumptions about the world and being one does not make their assertions any more true. I am not discounting you my friend or I would not have kept responding. I gave many specific examples throughout our discussion on both threads and you did not respond directly to any of them.

My main issue with the premise is the IS. It creates a necessity for real proof not just poetry, quips and self indulgent prose. Good luck in your pursuits , I think I have to tap out on this discussion and just agree to disagree.

Peace!

I'll just put it to the forum that "Ignorance is bliss" cannot be a statement of personal value, only as an evaluation of another's situation. It cannot exist as self-knowledge because awareness of one's ignorance destroys the associated bliss. I can imagine some value in protecting another's bliss by artificially maintaining their ignorance but it creates a rather obvious ethical issue for the protector. It also presupposes that one has the necessary power and resources to shield that other person from becoming aware of their ignorance. I imagine such power is probably easiest to maintain within a small cultish community that can effectively exclude the outside world and reinforce dogmatic allegience to beliefs that protect against the invasion of knowledge.

Consumer culture ,mass marketing , targeted marketing through algorithms , social media, public education and systematized debt slavery all combine to create an aggregate of obfuscation that has a stultifying affect on the way we perceive our reality. The calamity that is brewing and waiting to unfold is due to this communal ignorance of the level of exploitation at play and as the dynamic unfolds as it has so many times throughout history people will start to learn many lessons the hard way. This hard learning will not be blissful in any way.

I agree with GrecoRivera that the end of public ignorance is not blissful, except for possibly those who are not ignorant and who have successfully exploited the ignorant ones.

In the shorter term, ignorance can be equated with bliss if I were to take an effective sleeping pill.But then I would not be conscious so the sleeping pill would not after all result in bliss. Bliss is by its nature fleeting and cannot be caught in any net of ignorance, or by any other means.

I'll just put it to the forum that "Ignorance is bliss" cannot be a statement of personal value, only as an evaluation of another's situation. It cannot exist as self-knowledge because awareness of one's ignorance destroys the associated bliss.

Could it not also be said that "Ignorance cannot exist as self-knowledge, because awareness of one's ignorance destroys the associated ignorance"? That would indeed create a relationship between the two.

A blanket statement "ignorance is bliss" of course is false in that it implies ignorance about all is bliss. Ignorance about "what" is bliss? Qualifying a statement is needed so it can be discussed in a specified context.

Indeed, any context. I have tried to place it in relation to a concept of self, to no avail. Is this not the correct context to pursue this matter?

Indeed, any context. I have tried to place it in relation to a concept of self, to no avail. Is this not the correct context to pursue this matter?

How do you mean placing ignorance is bliss to a concept of self? The context you seek is not for others to decide since it is your question, but in order for others to answer your question it would help if you would elaborate concept of self.

Concept of Self:

But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation's relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation's relating itself to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two. Considered in this way a human being is still not a self.
In the relation between two, the relation is the third as a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation and in the relation to the relation; thus under the qualification of the psychical the relation between the psychical and the physical is a relation. If, however, the relation relates itself to itself, this relation is the positive third, and this is the self.

-Kierkegaard

Thoughts?

It seems like a classic example of mental mastrabation to me. It seems there must have been a underlying melancholy in Kierkegaard that cursed him to over rationalizing every aspect of his own thought.