Ignorance is bliss

Have you ever been called ignorant? How did you react to it? You probably didn’t take too kindly to it.

But what is wrong with being called ignorant? The definition of the word means that you are not knowledgeable about a specific subject, or that you just don’t know. There is nothing wrong with that. We can’t know everything about everything.

Obviously, many people believe that being called “ignorant” means they are calling you “dumb” or “rude.” And that’s just not true.

Which brings me to the old saying, “Ignorance is bliss.” It has become one of my favorite sayings. Again, many people are offended if someone says this to you. They take it to mean “it must be nice to be dumb.” I don’t take it that way. In fact, I believe it to be a fundamental truth of life. If I were to make a modern day Ten Commandments, I would put that statement in there.

I know what I am about to say is going to come across as arrogant - some may say even “ignorant” - but I believe myself to be a very smart individual, and maybe even too smart. That’s right, I said it. I always did well in school. I was always a bookworm. I love to read. I am one of those rare people who use the internet more to educate myself than I do for fun and games or social interaction. I pride myself on being a keen observer of people in social settings. Until very recently, I still enjoyed flipping through an old fashioned newspaper. I watch CNN and MSNBC on TV on a regular basis.

And what has all this accumulated knowledge gotten me? It has gotten me to the point where I have taken three different kinds of depression meds, that's where! When you get inundated with stories of mass shootings and crime on the news day after day, it tends to make you momentarily sad, maybe even permanently depressed. If you spend too much time out in public settings, you are bound to see cases of road rage or a “Karen” or two at the market. If you read the newspapers too much, you are bound to see stories about dumb politicians who should not be in power, doing dumb things. If you like to watch YouTube, you are bound to come across videos on how the planet is slowly dying.

So sometimes I need to remind myself that “ignorance is bliss.” Everyone has that ditsy friend who has no clue what is going on in the world. “Hey, did you hear Putin invaded Ukraine and over 100 civilians died in an attack and there are thousands of people trying to flee to eastern Europe?” And their response is, “No, I didn’t. Where is Ukraine and who is this guy, Putin?”

But that person always looks so happy! Who would you rather be - that ditsy person who knows about nothing going on in the world but is always smiling and happy, or the all-knowing person who has the resting bitch face and has a hard time getting out of bed in the morning?

I have to catch myself from fitting too much in the latter category. I don’t want to be totally oblivious to everything going on in the world, but there are things I wish I didn’t know.

I wish I didn’t know how cruel people can be in abusing or carelessly obliterating lives. I wish I didn’t know that more than 50% of marriages end in divorce (hence me still being single, and never married, at the age of 51). I wish I didn’t know that the planet is quickly reaching its capacity (hence I have no children) and that the sea levels are rising and the climate is getting increasingly erratic.

I wrote an article previously asking if you’d want to know the exact date you will die. Obviously, there are a lot of people that don’t want to know. Ignorance is bliss, after all. They don’t want that knowledge of when they are going to die hanging over their head as they go about their daily duties.

Think about terminally ill patients. Would you want to know you have a rare disease which affects only one in twenty million people and that you have only six months to live? Or would you rather go on with your life not knowing how unlucky you are?

How about - would you rather not know that you have a better chance of dying on a train than you do on an airplane the next time you set foot on a train? Sorry to do that to all you train commuters.

Being too knowledgeable on things has led, in part, to my depression. Without politicizing things too much (God knows that politics is assumed to be always off-limits despite the importance of discussing it), knowing that 47% of society supports Donald Trump really depresses me. Seeing school shootings on an almost weekly basis and seeing nothing being done about gun control depresses me. Seeing people more preoccupied with the Kardashians than Volodymyr Zelensky depresses me.

So what have I done to change my mood in my daily life? I have made it a point of not going full-blown ignorant, but instead take a couple of weeks every so often to not watch the news or check my phone for current events. I will just use my phone to socialize with people and play games. It is liberating. “Did you hear about the latest school shooting?”

“No, I did not.” And I will not pursue the subject any further, and walk away.

Boundaries are important in every aspect of life. Robert Oppenheimer (of whom there is now a big budget film about him in theaters) is credited with creating the atomic bomb, yet on his death bed, he proclaimed that he wished he had never discovered it. Just recently, the man who is considered the “Godfather of AI (artificial intelligence)”, Geoffery Hinton, walked away from the project, proclaiming that it is getting too advanced and, if left unregulated, he is worried that the technology could head in the wrong direction and fall in the wrong hands.

Ultimately, we need to just worry about our lives and our little circle of life. Too much knowledge of things that don’t concern us is unnecessary. We don’t need more things to worry about or to give us anxiety. We already have enough of that.

So the next time somebody calls you “ignorant,” say to them, “Thank you! Ignorance is bliss. You should try it.”