Meditation 3/7
In class we discussed whether ignorance truly is bliss. I agree with the cliche. Think about the reprocussions that were to happen if you knew when your own death would take place, or when you would find your soulmate or any other thing in life. Knowing that would ruin the days, weeks, months, years, leading up to it because you would not be able to live in the moment and fully enjoy every day because you are looking foward to something that isn't happening right that moment. Even knowing little things we look foward to them so much that we forget about other things, like everyone looking foward to spring break, but we're still in school and there is still stuff that needs to be done. Don't relax yet! Yes there is always a yearning to know and to learn, just like is shown in the play. But he would have been much much better off if he had just left the crazy women on the mountain be. It wasn't necessary for him to know about them, it did not expand his knowledge or make him a better person. It only weakened him as a person and in the end destroyed him. This only goes to show that ignorance is bliss.
posted by Amanda @ 11:18 AM
4 Comments:
I totally agree with you. Ignorance is bliss, if I could know what was going to happen in the next ten minutes, hour, day... I wouldn't want to know. Key elements to life are surprise and experience, without these, existence is boring, uneventful and predictable. In Tally's Folly, Sally was quoted saying, "Variety is the spice of life," and really isn't that the truth? If we are all anticipating what we think comes next, we miss the here and now and those are some of the best life experiences- the ones that come unexpectedly.
Ignorance may be bliss, but it is a false bliss. You might not know something but that does not mean that it is not there. Perhaps if he had known a little more, than he would have understood that a god was setting him up for death and torture. I consider Pentheus to be a vain character of youth's ignorance. He was ignorant, yet he was killed. How does that account for bliss?
I completely agree with you, if everyone knew what was going to happen to them, people would never get out of bed in the morning. They would live in fear and dread, sometimes it is just better not to know.
I totally agree with your statement that we would suffer numerous repercussions if we knew the exact moments of some of the most important times in our lives. I truly feel that not know what will happen to us is what makes us human and what gives us our free will. If we knew what was coming next we would probably find someway to be dissatisfied with what would otherwise be amazing and quite fearful of the things that would challenge us, causing unnecessary pain and stress in our short lives.
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