The saying that circulates among the public is used by people as a way of lamenting their own situation. It is usually preferred because others’ irresponsible attitude is envied. Yet responsibility also brings strength. Far from being a source of happiness, ignorance can in fact be called unhappiness.
- Ignorance: Lack of knowledge and experience.
Conscious ignorance, unconscious ignorance, cultural ignorance, scientific ignorance, religious ignorance, technical ignorance, emotional ignorance, social ignorance, cognitive ignorance, functional ignorance. - Happiness: A state of fulfillment. Feeling whole with life by realizing one’s potential.
Joy, delight, contentment, peace, satisfaction, ease, exhilaration.
An ignorant person may be content simply because they cannot perceive their own condition, but not every form of contentment is good. A person may accept poor conditions just to survive and feel content with them; yet we cannot call this a general state of happiness. Slaves or abused children cannot be said to be happy just because they have internalized a narrow understanding of life. If that were true, most animals and patients would be considered happy as well. Yet we look at them with pity, and we do not wish to be in their place. We can say that the phrase “ignorance is bliss” is largely a problem of vocabulary and simple labeling.
Each has his suffering: all are men,
Condemned alike to groan,
The tender for another’s pain;
The unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
’Tis folly to be wise.
The oldest known use of this saying comes from the 18th-century poet Thomas Gray’s poem “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.” A poem is not a propositional source of knowledge. Sometimes words are chosen merely for the sake of rhyme. Sometimes the opposite of what is meant is stated in order to evoke emotion. In this poem, the poet, observing children, envies the boys playing without awareness of the burdens of adulthood. Longing for childhood and ignorance can be a poetic expression, but it is not something anyone truly wants to live. Like everyone who says “ignorance is bliss,” it is part of speaking idly and voicing the first thought that comes to mind.
Ignorance is not bliss.
The ignorant cannot even realize their situation, cannot even know whether they are happy, so their experience cannot be called happiness. Calling a smile on the face “happiness” is simply a misuse of language. If we judge by facial expression or outward appearance, we could forcibly make everyone look happy. But what matters is a person’s inner unity with life—this is personal and inward.
An ignorant person—like a child—may think they are happy due to their ignorance. Yet merely being unaware of external conditions shows only irresponsibility or indifference. If someone smiles simply because they don’t understand something, then a different definition of happiness is being used, and the word is being applied with a different purpose.
No one truly wants to be a child; even those who claim so still want to grow. Being a child is within everyone’s reach—anyone can behave irresponsibly. But those who envy childhood do not reach into fire, chew on books, or play pretend games alone. Admiration for youth, on the other hand, belongs to those who misunderstand life—people who believe they can solve their mistakes by going backward, yet whose only real asset is a tendency to make even more mistakes.
Being human
A human is human by their mental capacity. We do not truly long for childhood or ignorance. Even if rhetoric suggests such longing, everyone wants to grow. The more a person grows, the more human they become. The more they know, the more human they become. No well-intentioned parent raises their child in order to keep them ignorant. No reasonable person wants to be called ignorant. Not knowing something has never been a virtue.
We must leave poetry in poems and reconsider our word choices in propositional claims. Ignorance is unhappiness, because without knowledge, one cannot even be aware of oneself.
