If Ignorance is bliss, what is knowledge? Everyone wants to be knowledgeable. I do not understand their reasons. But I have just one prayer: Oh God! Make me ignorant and keep me ignorant forever. I know that knowledge is a serpent which will surely administer its poisonous bite!
Who is Publilius Syrus? (85BC-43BC). He was a Latin writer, best known for his ‘Sententiae’. This word means ‘brief expressions of conventional wisdom or moral sayings. Majority of his works are lost. Few examples of his sayings:
- Ignorance is bliss
- Honor among thieves
- It is a bad plan that admits no modification
- The judge is condemned when the guilty is acquitted
- Fortune is like a glass. When it sparkles the most, it is easiest broken.
I am planning to buy a book titled “The moral sayings of Publilius Syrus, A Roman Slave” from Amazon (Rs.149/-). Having said all this, I wish to dwell deeper into the saying “Ignorance is Bliss”.
It is also said this phrase is coined by an English poet Thomas Gray in his 1742 “Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College”. The memorable statement “In knowing nothing, life is more delightful” is associated with Publilius Syrus.
I know not which one is actually belongs to Publilius Syrus. Anyway, due credit been given to the author, even if the author had existed some 2200 years ago!
If Ignorance is bliss, what is knowledge? I remember an article where something was said about the last wish of Albert Einstein. Having reached the pinnacle of physics, he said that if he were to have re-birth, he would want to be born as a plumber. Knowledge can only lead you to restlessness, depression and prevents us from enjoying the Creation.
What, then, is knowledge? Knowledge is Hell. All knowledge or any knowledge is hell. Mere absence of what we consider as knowledge is not ignorance. Ignorance has to be much more to be blissful. I guess ignorance is that ‘wonder’ in the child eyes; it is that childlike innocence. Ignorance is God!
“Where knowledge is free” is attributed to Rabindranath Tagore. Can there be a stupider statement than ‘Where knowledge is free’? Knowledge is never free. Knowledge comes with cost. The cost can be a ‘Thumb’ or for the present scientific knowledge, we pay with our lives.
Learn as if you were to live forever and live as if you were to die tomorrow is a powerful, often-quoted phrase attributed to Mahatma Gandhi that encourages lifelong learning, knowledge, curiosity and constant personal growth. It urges you to embrace learning as an endless journey, seeking knowledge throughout your entire life. No wonder he was called by the former British PM Winston Churchill as a “seditious middle temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir”
I would rather pray the Almighty to bless me with continued ignorance; the ignorance of Adam. I want to have the same ignorance with which I was born. The tabula rasa of John Locke. John Locke’s tabula rasa (“blank slate”) states that the human mind is born without innate ideas, rules, or knowledge. In other words, ignorance is bliss. It is the God.
Ignorance is enjoying a rose flower, its bloom, and aroma and a honey bee hovering on the flower. This ignorance tells as to why the rose flower is beautiful. Knowledge / science dissects the rose, and the rose is destroyed forever. It is no more beautiful. What would you do with that knowledge? What would you do with protoplasm?
I am a lifelong admirer of ignorance. I fully agree that Ignorance is bliss. “The unexamined life is not worth living” is a famous dictum from the Greek philosopher Socrates, recorded by Plato in Apology. No wonder he was put to death. For me only an ignorant life is the only life that is worth living. Oh God! Make me Ignorant.
About the Author
Dr. K. Raja Gopal Reddy is a seasoned internationally qualified Insurance professional. What you are reading here, may not answer all the questions we have, but has the absolute power of asking unsettling questions which increase the interest in the strange world, and show the contradictory wonders lying just below the surface of the commonest things of life. Look at this disturbing but beautiful thought of Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”. Dr. Reddy can be reached at: raja66gopal@gmail.com
