Meditation Six - Ignorance can be a blessing or a curse
Title/Subject: Meditation Six - The Bacchae
In class I said that I would rather be ignorant about a lot of things in my life than to know about them – when I’m going to die, what’s going to happen to me, etc. I realize now that I wouldn’t necessarily want to be ignorant of everything in my life, but I also realize that life could be a lot easier for everyone (at times) if they didn’t think so hard.
The idea of ‘ignorance is bliss’ is portrayed in The Bacchae. If Pentheus hadn’t been so curious about what the women were doing on the hillside, and if he didn’t have the presence of mind to try to force them to stop, I don’t believe he would have met the fate of death. You can also look at it from another character’s point of view – if Agave was actually aware she was killing her son, would she have really done it? Would any of the characters acted the same if they knew Dionysus was among them? I don’t think so. Whether a play is acting under the guise that ignorance is bliss or that knowledge is power, the fact is that wisdom, knowledge, whatever you want to call it, plays a major role in all the plays we’ve read thus far.
posted by Anonymous @ 10:52 PM
5 Comments:
I agree with your statement that the majority of the characters in The Bacchae would have behaved much differently had they known Dionysus, a bona fide god, was in their midst. You suggest that Pentheus might not have died if his actions were somehow altered. However, I just wonder if it was his inescapable fate no matter how he behaved. I get the sense that he would have died regardless of his insolence. In a way, he was simply being used to punish Cadmus and Agave. Also, I am not so sure the Agave example is useful to your meditation. She had no power over her actions on the mountain because Dionysus had control of her. I think it would serve you better to go back and discuss how different it would be if Agave in her right mind had not denied him in the first place.
I agree that there is an on-going debate between which is correct: ignorance is bliss or knowledge is power. However, I also think that there is no way to know if one is better that the other in all circumstances. In the Bacchae, I agree that Pentheus's ignorance drove him to die, but I'm not quite sure that his fate would have been altered had he known what was going on. Perhaps (like many Greek Tragedies suggest) it was Pentheus's fate to die at the hands of his mother. In this case, it really didnt' matter what he did, didn't do, knew, or didn't know, either way he would fulfilled his destiny.
I whole-heartedly agree with Averie in that the Fates would not have changed whether or not Dionsysis was there. The Greeks made it very obvious that no one can escape their own fate. Excluding Dionysis from the play would not have changed that. The women still traditionally would have gone to the mountain side to do their annual thing they do. Dionysis may prove to be a catylist in the play, but not an origanal element.
I agree that ignorance is bliss; I just think there is a difference in not knowing something and trying to find something out. In The Bacchae we find Pentheus trying to find out what is going with the women and he tries to get around their attempts to hide what they are doing and he learns things he doesn’t want to know and gets killed. Pentheus was not ignorant of what was going on, he was trying to gain knowledge for personal gain and as a result he lost his life. Agave however did not know what was going on, nor was she trying to find out. Had she, I agree she would have been a lot more troubled and concerned that she had just killed her son. She was truly ignorant of what was going on and it worked for her because she would not suffer knowing she killed her son. In a situation such as Agave’s, ignorance truly is bliss; but when it comes down to personal gain, it no longer counts as ignorance- it becomes a selfish desire for personal gain.
Yes, it would be different if we weren't ignorant, but no one would be happy. People would be counting how few days they had left. I don't agree with it being less complicated either because everyone would be trying to cheat death or change their destiny; just like Oedipus Rex. And look how that turned out...
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