Who hasn’t heard the phrase “ignorance is bliss” a thousand occasions?
Like all cliches, it sticks as a result of it’s rooted in fact, however it’s value asking why ignorance may be so satisfying. In case you learn the historical past of philosophy, you don’t discover all that a lot curiosity within the delights of ignorance. As a substitute, you hear lots in regards to the pursuit of fact, which is assumed to be a common human impulse.
That’s not totally improper, in fact. However denial and avoidance are additionally human impulses, typically extra highly effective than our must know. So these drives — a must know and a robust want by no means to by no means discover out — are sometimes warring inside us, shaping our worldview, {our relationships}, and our self-image.
Mark Lilla is a professor of the humanities at Columbia College and the writer of a brand new e book known as Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting To not Know. It’s brief, elegantly written, and possibly the very best praise I may give is that it reads like a e book that might’ve been written at nearly any level in trendy historical past. It engages one of many oldest questions in philosophy — to know or to not know? — and manages to supply recent insights that really feel related and timeless on the identical time.
So I invited Lilla on The Grey Space to discover why we settle for and resist the reality and what it means to dwell repeatedly in that pressure. As at all times, there’s far more within the full podcast, so pay attention and comply with The Grey Space on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you discover podcasts. New episodes drop each Monday.
This interview has been edited for size and readability.
The e book opens with a sort of parody of Plato’s well-known Allegory of the Cave. Within the authentic story, there are prisoners who spend their complete life certain by chains in a cave taking a look at shadows being forged on a wall, and so they mistake these shadows for actuality as a result of it’s the one actuality they’ve ever identified. What’s your spin on it?
In Plato’s version, a stranger is available in and turns one of many prisoners round in order that he realizes that he’s been dwelling in a world of shadows and is invited to climb as much as the solar after which lives up there till he’s informed to return again down and get different individuals.
In my model of the story, he’s bought somewhat pal with him, a younger boy who additionally goes up. When it comes time to return down, the person tells him he can keep up staring on the varieties and being within the pure daylight and seeing what’s, and it seems he’s determined to return. It’s a chilly life. All of his fantasy and creativeness have dried up. He misses his digital associates and ultimately he’s taken again down. And so I begin the e book saying it’s an open query whether or not popping out into daylight is an effective factor.
We wish to know the reality, we wish to see the world as it’s, however we additionally have to be unaware of sure issues and we actually, actually hate to confess our personal ignorance. So we’re always enjoying this recreation of cover and search with ourselves. This can be a weirdly untenable dance for people, don’t you assume?
It’s. Individuals don’t wish to really feel that they’re incurious and holding issues at arm’s distance and never interested by them. I believe a part of it’s that our opinions should not issues that we simply have in a bag that we pull out once they want expression, however quite they really feel like prostheses, like an additional limb, and if somebody refutes our argument or mocks it, it seems like one thing fairly intimate has been touched.
And so that’s an incentive to not admit your ignorance and to construct up all kinds of defenses and attraction to bogus authorities with the intention to stay satisfied of your personal rational capacities and your independence. It turns into a sort of perverse factor the place you’re always making an attempt to patch issues collectively to point out to your self and others you perceive, and within the meantime, you can begin pulling in some preposterous issues that change into a part of your worldview.
Is there a very good mannequin of a properly ignorant individual, somebody who climbs the mountain of information and says as soon as they attain the height, what? I prefer it higher down there within the cave!
I believe you’re leaving out an choice, and that choice is one thing that Socrates explores within the different Platonic dialogues, which is studying from your personal ignorance. That’s to acknowledge that you just’re genuinely and customarily ignorant about issues and to proceed inquiring with the understanding of what you give you is tentative.
Particularly proper now, we dwell in a world the place we’re increasingly more conscious of the uncertainty of our information as a result of issues modified so rapidly. It was very hanging to me throughout Covid simply how pissed off individuals gave the impression to be by the truth that the general public well being authorities saved altering their recommendation. First they stated it was all about washing your arms, after which they stated it was all about masks and so forth, and so they get offended about that, however that’s the best way science works.
However individuals don’t wish to dwell that method. They like to listen to from an authority that that is what you do. They need a physician who doesn’t hem and haw and doesn’t always change the meds and say, “Let’s do this, let’s attempt that.” It’s very destabilizing. And so I believe we have now a craving to dwell standing on stable floor, however we don’t stand on stable floor.
Do you assume that ignorance additionally has an influence that we overlook?
Yeah. I started the e book with a citation from George Eliot’s novel, Daniel Deronda, saying that we thought lots in regards to the energy of information, however we haven’t thought in regards to the energy of ignorance. And what she means is the ability of people who find themselves ignorant to mess issues up in life, that it’s a sort of social drive on the market, which is definitely the case.
However ignorance can also be energy if not figuring out sure issues or leaving sure issues unexamined allow you to proceed in your life and never be paralyzed. I take advantage of an instance firstly of the e book: What would occur if we every had an LED display embedded in our foreheads and we may learn the ideas of everybody round us?
Social life would grind to a halt as a result of you possibly can’t management your ideas, proper? We’d always be trying to see how individuals are interested by us, and we may by no means develop a steady sense of ourselves.
There are many people who find themselves willfully ignorant, and there are many people who find themselves unaware of their ignorance, however then there’s this different species of cynicism you discuss within the e book that knowingly exploits ignorance. What’s the political significance of this?
Individuals want certainty, and they’re going to demand it. And so political leaders, demagogues particularly, can present easy solutions to issues that appear very sophisticated and that stir individuals in a method that may be directed. That’s classically how a demagogue works and the way a demagogue turns into a tyrant.
Particularly now, I’m not shocked that we’re going through aggressive ignorance amongst populists and people who are moved by populists. Making sense of issues proper now may be very tough as a result of we simply don’t know varied issues as a result of our expertise is so new. For instance, what do you do about the truth that the state of any nation’s financial system is dependent upon a global financial system and that no nation has a full say in how that worldwide financial system operates, and it’ll proceed to have an effect on everybody in each nation?
It’s laborious to simply accept the truth that our political leaders don’t management the financial system. And so that you go to whoever says he’s the reply, or whoever says she’s the reply. It is vitally laborious, for all of us, to confront the current with an open thoughts and a deep sense of the tentativeness of our understanding of it.
Sooner or later, we have now to ask: What’s the purpose of information? Do we wish information for the sake of information as a result of it’s inherently good, or is information solely beneficial if it’s helpful? And if figuring out one thing isn’t helpful or if figuring out one thing is definitely painful, why would we wish to understand it?
The query that you just’re asking, for me at the least within the e book, can be a query of various sorts of human characters. There are some individuals for whom one thing quickens inside each time the chance of recent information presents itself. Why that occurs, why the soul responds like that, is a thriller, and Socrates tells varied myths about why that could be, however it simply appears to be a truth and never everybody has it.
Do you assume there’s something value figuring out whatever the value?
Self-knowledge may be dangerous if it’s partial. That’s the story of Augustine within the Confessions in the intervening time the place he says, “God ripped off the again of me,” which was this different face and all the pieces that everybody else may see, however I couldn’t after which God holds it in entrance of me, and I see myself, and in that second I’m so horrified that one thing clicks and I give myself over.
So there may very well be limits to this sort of factor, however Socrates assumes that each one self-knowledge is in the long run going to be useful since you at the moment are clear to your self and that figuring out itself makes individuals good. As soon as , the ability of your ignorance is not holding you hostage.
Do you assume that’s true? I don’t assume so.
No, I don’t. And it’s laborious to imagine that Socrates actually thought that. You’ll be able to see it in the best way he offers with different individuals within the Platonic dialogues, you see that he has lots of information about how individuals fall wanting that.
Yeah, I may positively see a case being made for at all times desirous to know summary truths and truths in regards to the exterior world. However in relation to self-knowledge, typically while you peer inward, what you discover is that you just’re only a bundle of contradictions that may’t be squared, and I’m unsure it’s essentially good to be intimately acquainted with that and to get hung up on that.
There’s a technique wherein it’s, and that’s the Montaigne choice. The image Montaigne offers of us within the essays is that we’re precisely what you simply stated, and his recommendation is to dwell with it. Simply go along with it. You’re a contradiction.
I believe that’s simpler stated than executed, although it’s most likely smart. However do you assume there’s a hyperlink, possibly even a essential hyperlink, between self-knowledge and information of the exterior world? In different phrases, on some degree, do we have now to know ourselves with the intention to know the reality in regards to the world outdoors ourselves?
I can consider a pair solutions to that. I’m unsure which one could be mine. One is that these items are removable. I bear in mind spending a yr on the Institute for Superior Examine, and I’d typically go and sit on this place the place the scientists and mathematicians have been, and you possibly can inform these individuals simply had no self-awareness when it comes to how individuals reacted to them. Maybe they have been simply wrapped up of their issues and so they have been discovering issues.
Then again, one barrier to us in figuring out issues in regards to the world is to know what constitutes figuring out, and that requires an evaluation of ourselves. After which the third sense, whereas not strictly essential, the train of making an attempt to know oneself is a sort of coaching train for inquiring in regards to the world outdoors.
I do wish to speak a bit about nostalgia, which you’ve written about earlier than and once more on this new e book. At what level in our journey of information, as people and societies, are we overtaken by nostalgia? At what level are we simply longing to return to a earlier time once we didn’t know what we now know?
In terms of complete societies being nostalgic, I believe that it has to do two issues: One is illegibility. When the world turns into illegible, the current turns into illegible. Meaning you don’t know tips on how to act, and should you don’t know tips on how to act, it’s deeply disturbing since you need to have the ability to management your setting and management issues so you possibly can attain your personal ends.
And so a dissatisfaction with the current and an absence of information about tips on how to enhance issues are spurs to think about that, simply as being 8 years outdated appeared simpler and simpler than being 68 years outdated, that there was a time when life was ordered in a greater method wherein we knew much less about varied issues or sure adjustments hadn’t occurred, and possibly we will reverse the machine or reverse the practice.
I do marvel what the upshot of all this pondering and writing was for you personally. Have you ever modified your relationship to your personal ignorance on account of this challenge?
I’d hope so. I believe I’ve a greater understanding of what philosophy is and what philosophy can do —
What’s it that philosophy can and might’t do?
Philosophy that’s conscious of our ignorance is a step ahead. The best cognitive achievement of human beings is attending to possibly.
