Me and my parents were having this conversation a few weeks ago. In school we were taught that Ignorance Is Bliss. My mum being an english teacher, my dad questioned her, Shouldn’t it be Ignorance Is Not Bliss instead? Ignorance is bliss because if you don’t know something, it can’t hurt you. As children, people are themselves and get along much better. The more we age, the farther we lose who we are and begin to restrain ourselves for fear of others. As we grow older, we become increasingly aware of pain and suffering, and the more we know about everything wrong in the world, the more we lose our innocence and become less ‘blissful’. I read once that when we lose the innocence of childhood, we become compassionate. That’s the start of adulthood. We loose our ignorance and bliss with innocence, but we gain knowledge, compassion, and understanding.

This kept me pondering.

Ignorance Is Bliss, this can probably be applied for so many years back, where ignoring a fact may actually keep you happy. Not knowing it is probably going to keep you at joy. In this 21st Century world, we cannot ignore things anymore. Ignoring them will only get us deeper in trouble, ignorance is going to make us unhappy. This is why i strongly agree with my dad that Ignorance Is Not Bliss.

My mum mentioned that these sort of Idioms may not work in the current world, that is why she always opens them to conversation and arguments with her students.

Ignorance Is Bliss

My conclusion, Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is simply that, Ignorance. One can’t claim that just because a person is ignorant they are happy. In fact, I believe it’s the opposite. A truely ignorant person can’t ever achieve true happiness, because part of happiness is the acceptance of life’s experiences (both positive and negative). The ignorant haven’t had, or don’t understand these experiences, and therefore have not had the chance to arrive at the conclusion of acceptance. Furthermore, true ignorance is in most cases temporary. It may last for years, or even decades, but the majority of people do not live their entire lives in a state of ignorance. Instead, they at some point arrive at a sort of ‘epiphany’ of one kind or another. For a person who has lived up to this time in ignorance, this would come as quite a shock and would probably have more of an effect than it would on a less ignorant person. In this regard, when thinking about the long term, ignorance is actually an inhibitor of bliss, not a cause. While the ignorant may feel happy for a time, they are actually just unawhere of the things that suppress bliss, meaning, they are not truely happy, simply ignorant.