The great discussions in response to my previous post “A Bias towards Ignorance” questioned if ignorance is bliss. This post attempts to answer this question.
I recalled an Egyptian movie that addresses this question. It is about a happily married couple who suffered only from their failure to have a baby. Years passed and the hope of having a baby waned.
The husband longing to be a father remarried covertly. He did not want to lose his first beloved wife.
One day his first wife felt sick when her husband was on a mission in another city. To her joyful surprise, her doctor told her that she was pregnant. Jumping with joy she decided to travel to her husband to celebrate with him the happy news. Upon arrival at the hotel where her husband stayed, she saw him with another woman. She found out that she was his second wife. She raged but the husband told her he could not because they both were celebrating her pregnancy as well.
The two wives delivered in the same hospital on the same day. The second wife died right after her delivery. The husband registered both baby boys as twins of his first wife.
The wife could not tell who her baby was between the two babies no matter how hard she tried. They grew up. One of the two boys died in a car accident. The husband then asked his wife if she wanted to know who her real son was. She screamed no, no!
She preferred ignorance over knowledge.
Knowing can be troubling to the mind and the heart. It is consuming.
Unknowing or ignorance is bliss in other cases than the movie showed. Nobody knows when she/he shall die. It is this ignorance that acts as a reminder for us to behave well and be honest for there can be no tomorrow at any time.
We live our lives as if we were living forever but act wisely as if we were dying tomorrow.
Do you agree?
Interesting reflection.
I have read that, according to scientific research, ignorance is the key to happiness. It would be precisely the lack of knowledge to ignite the curiosity and creativity necessary to make life better.
First of all, I would note that one thing is ignorance literally understood in the sense of someone who knows nothing about something and therefore has no mental categories to understand its meaning; another thing is, Socratically speaking, the ignorance that derives from the acquisition of knowledge: the more we know, the more we are able to contemplate other levels of reality in front of which we may still have so much to discover. our knowledge always contains a certain dose of ignorance, and it is good that it is, however I think that ignorance always remains a bad traveling companion, even the ancients knew that they saw an important person in the essay. And the sage was both a theorist and a practitioner!
Very interesting comment, Aldo
Your comment has three key points
1- Ignorance is the key to happiness- so true. One Caliph prayed to God tp grant him the faith of orderly people and not that of scientists for the same reason. it is aan unconditional and unquestioned faith.
2- the lack of knowledge to ignite the curiosity and creativity – like a child because of curiosity he wants to discover, experiment and learn. Minds like to be filled and children fill them with curiosity.
3- our knowledge always contains a certain dose of ignorance. This is in accordance with what I wrote in my profile “the more I know the lesser I know for I discover how much more I need to know”.
I concur with your comment.