Ignorance is bliss?

The Wymondham University of the Third Age (U3A) has an event on 24th November, 10:00-13:00 in the Tiffey Room, Central Hall, Wymondham that examines the cliché ‘ignorance is bliss’. I find this a highly thought-provoking question, so I can’t help but type a few words on the matter.

From a quick search online, I see that the Collins Dictionary defines ignorance as a “lack of knowledge, information, or education; the state of being ignorant.” The U3A post also highlights David Rumsfeld’s idea of “knowns” or “unknown unknowns”. From the U3A post, the definition of bliss is to “reach a state of perfect happiness, oblivious of everything else”.

Rumsfeld highlighted this idea of known knowns, which are things we know we know; known unknowns, which are things we know we don’t know; and unknown unknowns, which are things we don’t know we don’t know. Ignorance, in keeping with the above definition, could apply to any of these three categories of knowing or unknowing, as knowing does not necessarily mean that one is informed or educated. For example, I can know about wave-particle duality but be ignorant of the mathematics that underpins these ideas, even if I can just about remember a lambda going somewhere in the formula. But, that is a combination of knowns and unknowns, with some of the latter being known and others not. Yet, I still find meaning in these concepts and can accept the truth of the concepts, even finding they can be useful in other applications.

Take, for example, the questions of duality in the self. Am I body and mind; am I body, and mind? Am I one, or am I two? In these cases, I can apply the principles of wave-particle duality and see that in many senses, my body is like the particle while my mind is like the wave. Yet, they occupy the same ‘space’, or at least, they occupy the same sense of self as each other, overlapping in a mostly harmonious way.

Naturally, this could be expanded upon, and one could suggest that the self is not one or two but three. This would certainly align with Freudian ideas of ego, id and superego, and I think it can be equated to trinitarian approaches of Godhood that may well be informed by the shared yet individual experiences of self that may well drive acceptance of these ideas. But that goes a bit beyond the discussion at hand, which is between two ideas, not three. Perhaps knowing that I don’t yet know my conclusion on the matter is driving me from addressing it, and I seek bliss by maintaining a state of ignorance.

One idea that comes to mind is that of cognitive dissonance. Collins Dictionary defines it as “anxiety that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes, beliefs, or the like”, which is a useful summary. Just last night, I rewatched the film Oppenheimer, and the scene in which Oppenheimer poisons his professor’s apple with cyanide comes to mind. While the film doesn’t go into detail, Oppenheimer does discuss this in the context of Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis and expresses one such cognitive dissonance with words to the effect of “I had some trouble… I poisoned my professor’s apple… but I really liked him.” So, here we see an action that is incongruous with Oppenheimer’s beliefs, one that dramatically sets the stage for his later moral conflict as someone whose research and development efforts led to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing between 129,000 and 226,000 people with just two bombs.

Examples aside, cognitive dissonance could be considered antithetical to bliss, yet it is not necessarily mutually exclusive. This is because we may be ignorant of the causes of our cognitive dissonance or even of the unease it brings us, yet we do not attain bliss at the same time. If ignorance is truly bliss, then shouldn’t ignorance always mean bliss? Likewise, if bliss is to “reach a state of perfect happiness, oblivious to everything else”, then shouldn’t that mean that to be blissful is to be ignorant?

I would disagree with this idea and would instead argue that one can be ignorant but not blissful and blissful but not ignorant. Take meditation, for example. This is a state of contemplative mindfulness that can reveal a wide range of deep, profound and insightful experiences and can be considered blissful by some. Yet, this could be considered a far-from-ignorant practice and can reveal great knowledge and understanding in tandem with feelings of bliss. Perhaps, then, being oblivious is a concept worth exploring further. For simplicity, Collins Dictionary defines oblivious as being “unaware or forgetful”. Ah, so to be in a state of bliss could be defined as “reaching a state of perfect happiness, unaware or forgetful of everything else.”

So, can we be unaware of that which we know? I would argue that, yes, we can. Awareness, as I understand it, would be something that we are attentive to, yet not necessarily something that we know. Taking this back to the film Oppenheimer, there is a scene in which he meets President Truman, who, in the film, responds to Oppenheimer’s admission that he feels he has blood on his hands, words to the effect of “Do you think the Japanese care who designed the bomb? They only care who dropped it. Don’t tell me you have blood on your hands. I dropped the bomb.” I think it is a fair statement to say that those who were victims of Fat Man and Little Boy were acutely aware of the mushroom cloud but entirely ignorant of it being a nuclear bomb since they could not have known. Somehow, I doubt they experienced feelings of bliss as a result of ignorance of the causal nature of the explosion, yet if ignorance is bliss, then they surely would have.

Clearly, “ignorance is bliss” is not to be taken too literally; it is an idiom. In other words, it’s an oversimplification that succinctly sums up a general truth that not focusing on overtly negative things is generally preferable to being consumed by them, and this lends itself to ingraining patterns of behaviour that lead each of us in various ways to look away from truth as a means to self soothe. For some, they will focus on their work; for others, they may take time to express themselves through art. Some of us are prescribed medications, and some of us shut out the feelings. A lot of us do them all to varying degrees. But do any of these things make us truly ignorant of our inner and outer truths, or do they distract us from them momentarily?

One significant problem I have with the provided definition of ignorance is this notion of “perfect happiness” since I do not believe anything that exists can be perfect unless that notion of perfection embraces the inherent imperfection of that which exists. Take, for example, the existence of an apple. It has grown as the fruit of an apple tree, reached a point of ripeness and has then been plucked or dropped from the tree. At any given moment, it is different from itself in any other given moment. Why? Well, looking at it from a fairly human level, we can see that it changes over time. It may be eaten; it may rot. It will change. Or, perhaps, look at it on the cellular level. Some cells will die, while others will grow. Or how about on the level of the atom, where it may be struck by ionising radiation and undergo a change? What about in the general sense? Well, we may see it in the sense of thermodynamics and recognise that everything is in a state of entropy or change and that by virtue of being, we must exist in and as change. So, is there such a thing as a perfect apple?

I would argue that in any given moment, any given thing is perfectly itself and that we categorise items into groupings based upon like characteristics. That is to say, there are no two identical apples, but there are countless apples that conform to the notion of an apple by virtue of their shared characteristics. Arguably, both ignorance and bliss are much like this.

Can we ever say that your experience of bliss matches mine? Does your state of ignorance match mine? For me, we each experience both of these things to varying degrees, sometimes more of one than the other, sometimes both simultaneously, and sometimes neither. In this sense, it could be seen that sometimes we are ignorantly blissful, unaware of our bliss. Other times, we could be blissfully ignorant, unaware of our ignorance. Sometimes, we are neither ignorant nor blissful, and sometimes we are blissful but not ignorant. In any case, I would take the view that these terms are not mutually exclusive; that is, it’s not either or, and you can have both.

Yet, there is more to be said. While I have taken the view that they are not mutually exclusive, it’s not to say there is not a relationship between the two; a balance is to be struck. The Dunning-Kreuger Effect is a theory that as knowledge – or, more accurately, expertise – increases, so too does confidence: to a point. Then there is a crisis of confidence, a question of “How do I know that I know?” and a crushing loss of confidence, followed by a gradual resurgence. Perhaps this is the experience that ‘ignorance is bliss’ alludes to. This sense of knowing too much. To enter into a state of chronic self-doubt as a consequence of asking if known knowns may, in fact, be unknown known unknowns, or more simply, that the knowledge, information or education may, in fact, be flawed.

Much of what I have typed here is flawed. It can’t not be. I’m not a physicist. My recollection of Oppenheimer is bound to be inaccurate. My understanding of the subject matter could be completely wrong. But as I write this, I feel a sense of bliss in knowing that I do not know because I don’t need to. This discussion of a hypothetical is just that. Yet, I find value in exploring these ideas. I find meaning. I find the truth as I find it.

Ultimately, I would see ignorance and bliss as states of being that exist in flux. We can all be ignorant, whereas, at other times, we can be erudite. We can all experience bliss, whereas, at other times, we can be devoid of it. To say that ignorance is bliss, in my view, is to deny oneself both freedom from ignorance and liberation through bliss. It is only through accepting that we are sometimes ignorant that we can open ourselves to sometimes being blissful. Existing in either extreme is to deny the reality that we all exist in change, in flux. It is to deny our imperfections. It is to deny our reality.

Knowledge changes. Information changes. Education changes.

People change.

I certainly changed my views, having explored these ideas. If you’re interested in this sort of thing, then it definitely seems worthwhile that you attend The Wymondham University of the Third Age (U3A) event on 24th November, 10:00-13:00 in the Tiffey Room, Central Hall, Wymondham, that examines the cliché ‘ignorance is bliss’. The bonus of attending is that you’ll get your say in this discussion. Unfortunately, it clashes with an appointment, so I won’t be there, but I certainly found the exploration of these ideas to be highly thought-provoking, and it’s a delight to see events such as this one happening in Wymondham.