| Ignorance as bliss? Smart vs happy?
Posted: 3/29/2009 2:28:58 PM | @ Wanderer1999
Given a choice, would most people choose to be highly intelligent and aware of the true nature of things, or would they rather be ignorant and happy?
I used to believe that that knowledge brought misery and that smarter people were less happy than the blissfully ignorant. At one time I cited the example of people with "Downs syndrome", noting that they were irrepressibly happy in spite of the world being basically unkind to them in many ways (prejudicial/patronizing attitudes, etc.)
However, I have since changed my old belief and now feel that the reverse is true. Never feeling content to live in ignorance, I have spent a lifetime in study and learned much as a consequence. I now find I'm a fundamentally happy sort, notwithstanding the fact that I've learned that the world basically sucks - BIG TIME.
When did my attitude change? When I learned to see all life experience (positive and negative, just and unjust) as a lesson and felt empowered to know that what I do about things MATTERS and CAN make the world a better place, if only just a little. I guess you could say my attitude changed at the moment of self-actualization, (or Nirvana if you prefer to call it that). Much like Scrooge on Christmas morning, I suddenly changed into a happy man and have been ever since.
I never would have reached that point had I not spent much of my life questioning everything I could and getting more depressed by the answers I was getting. It might be easiest to express what I'm saying by constructing a graph where the x-axis is knowledge and starts at zero (put an asymptote there) and ends at self actualization/nirvana (put another one there). The y-axis represents bliss. The graphed function resembles a secant curve with a minimum at zero on the bliss axis. The maxima are undefined as bliss is near infinite both at the moment of birth (complete ignorance) and the moment of nirvana (rebirth?).
In looking at our march from birth to the minimum, we can see where the correlation between knowledge and bliss appears as an inverse relation. Isofar as intelligent people are seekers of knowledge, it is logical to conclude that the more you know, the more misery you endure and therefore that intelligent people must be unhappy.
The good news is that the graph doesn't end at the minimum; keep trying to figure things out. You may yet be irrepressibly happy! | |
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| Ignorance as bliss? Smart vs happy?
Posted: 3/29/2009 2:50:30 PM |
Given a choice, would most people choose to be highly intelligent and aware of the true nature of things, or would they rather be ignorant and happy?
Since - imo - happiness is a state of mind, I don't see equating happiness with ignorance, or intelligence with (implied) unhappiness. One can certainly be ignorant and happy, just as one can be intelligent and happy as well...it's all a matter of how we choose to perceive ourselves, circumstances, and how we choose to then react. Ignorance can be bliss, but so can living with total awareness, if we so choose. | |
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| Ignorance as bliss? Smart vs happy?
Posted: 3/29/2009 2:50:49 PM |
Given a choice, would most people choose to be highly intelligent and aware of the true nature of things, or would they rather be ignorant and happy?
Since - imo - happiness is a state of mind, I don't see equating happiness with ignorance, or intelligence with (implied) unhappiness. One can certainly be ignorant and happy, just as one can be intelligent and happy as well...it's all a matter of how we choose to perceive ourselves, circumstances, and how we choose to then react. Ignorance can be bliss, but so can living with total awareness, if we so choose. | |
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| Ignorance as bliss? Smart vs happy?
Posted: 3/30/2009 4:15:26 PM | | Yeah in a perfect world its nice to say I would rather want to know but there are things in life you cant change, you cant influence. In my experience it can be torment to know something that you cant influence. Imo it is more a question of the inner strength of the person rather than their intellect if they want to know or not. Ofc that does not apply to things you can change. | |
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| Ignorance as bliss? Smart vs happy?
Posted: 3/30/2009 6:12:49 PM |
You know and understand everything (if you have a very high IQ).
Not hardly. There is far more information on this planet than any one human, heck, any hundred million humans, could possibly absorb. | |
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| Ignorance as bliss? Smart vs happy?
Posted: 3/30/2009 6:30:37 PM | | Ha, not so. It only can seem that way if you fall into the trap of mistaking detail for distinction. There is a very small amount of information when you are dealing with it in its true abstract form. For example you might over complicate what there is to know about the universe by supposing that there is anything significant in irrelevant details, whereas if you limited yourself to information that means anything, you could absorb it all in one swoop with a swoop like, "Stuff exists". Human intelligence has this system of hierarchical organization, which simplifies any level of complexity. It's how you can go for a lazy swim in the sea without concentrating on every last molecule of water. You can't absorb the forest one tree at a time. But you can absorb all the forests of the world in a single concept, which I like to call flora. | |
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| Ignorance as bliss? Smart vs happy?
Posted: 5/22/2009 4:51:59 AM | It is a positive thing to be curious and get the facts right. One cannot choose to be intelligent but can expand their knowledge and be open and receptive.
Interesting example: A 28 year old educated man who claimed to be intelligent said to me that Indians are descendants of Red Indians who were chased out of American continents. He even became abusive when I tried to explain the fact.
I am no scientist just a modest and open minded human being. It makes me 'happy' to know that I have the 'intellect' to try and understand the universe around me. | |
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| Ignorance as bliss? Smart vs happy?
Posted: 5/22/2009 6:06:36 PM | | The irony of it all is that if everyone was consious and aware we would have the tools to build a utopian society. But because so many are ignorant and loving every moment of it, we are heading full steam ahead to building our own prisons. | |
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