Who hasn’t heard the phrase “ignorance is bliss” a thousand instances?
Like all cliches, it sticks as a result of it’s rooted in reality, however it’s value asking why ignorance might be so satisfying. In the event 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 quite a bit concerning the pursuit of fact, which is assumed to be a common human impulse.
That’s not completely flawed, after all. However denial and avoidance are additionally human impulses, typically extra highly effective than our have to know. So these drives — a have to know and a powerful need 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 quick, elegantly written, and possibly the very best praise I may give is that it reads like a e book that would’ve been written at nearly any level in fashionable historical past. It engages one of many oldest questions in philosophy — to know or to not know? — and manages to supply contemporary 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 reside constantly in that pressure. As all the time, there’s rather more within the full podcast, so pay attention and observe 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 form of parody of Plato’s well-known Allegory of the Cave. Within the authentic story, there are prisoners who spend their entire life sure by chains in a cave taking a look at shadows being solid 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 residing in a world of shadows and is invited to climb as much as the solar after which lives up there till he’s advised to come back again down and get different individuals.
In my model of the story, he’s acquired a bit 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 pals 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 efficient factor.
We need to know the reality, we need to see the world as it’s, however we additionally must be unaware of sure issues and we actually, actually hate to confess our personal ignorance. So we’re consistently taking part in this recreation of cover and search with ourselves. This can be a weirdly untenable dance for people, don’t you suppose?
It’s. Folks don’t need to really feel that they’re incurious and holding issues at arm’s distance and never serious about them. I believe a part of it’s that our opinions aren’t issues that we simply have in a bag that we pull out after they want expression, however relatively they really feel like prostheses, like an additional limb, and if somebody refutes our argument or mocks it, it appears like one thing fairly intimate has been touched.
And so that’s an incentive to not admit your ignorance and to construct up all types of defenses and attraction to bogus authorities to be able to stay satisfied of your individual rational capacities and your independence. It turns into a form of perverse factor the place you’re consistently 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 turn into a part of your worldview.
Is there a very good mannequin of a correctly ignorant individual, somebody who climbs the mountain of data and says as soon as they attain the height, You realize what? I prefer it higher down there within the cave!
I believe you’re leaving out an possibility, and that possibility is one thing that Socrates explores within the different Platonic dialogues, which is studying from your individual ignorance. That’s to acknowledge that you just’re genuinely and usually ignorant about issues and to proceed inquiring with the understanding of what you provide you with is tentative.
Particularly proper now, we reside in a world the place we’re increasingly more conscious of the uncertainty of our information as a result of issues modified so shortly. It was very putting to me throughout Covid simply how annoyed individuals gave the impression to be by the truth that the general public well being authorities saved altering their recommendation. First they mentioned it was all about washing your arms, after which they mentioned it was all about masks and so forth, and so they get indignant about that, however that’s the best way science works.
However individuals don’t prefer to reside 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 consistently change the meds and say, “Let’s do that, let’s attempt that.” It’s very destabilizing. And so I believe we now have a craving to reside standing on stable floor, however we don’t stand on stable floor.
Do you suppose 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 quite a bit concerning the energy of data, however we haven’t thought concerning the energy of ignorance. And what she means is the facility of people who find themselves ignorant to mess issues up in life, that it’s a form of social pressure on the market, which is actually the case.
However ignorance can 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 at first of the e book: What would occur if we every had an LED display screen embedded in our foreheads and we might learn the ideas of everybody round us?
Social life would grind to a halt as a result of you may’t management your ideas, proper? We might consistently be seeking to see how individuals are serious about us, and we might by no means develop a secure 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?
Folks want certainty, and they’re going to demand it. And so political leaders, demagogues specifically, can present easy solutions to issues that appear very difficult 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 stunned that we’re dealing with aggressive ignorance amongst populists and those that are moved by populists. Making sense of issues proper now may be very tough as a result of we simply don’t know numerous 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 economic system depends upon a global economic system and that no nation has a full say in how that worldwide economic system operates, and it’ll proceed to have an effect on everybody in each nation?
It’s onerous to just accept the truth that our political leaders don’t management the economic system. And so that you go to whoever says he’s the reply, or whoever says she’s the reply. It is extremely onerous, 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 now have to ask: What’s the purpose of data? Do we would like information for the sake of data 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 need to realize it?
The query that you just’re asking, for me no less than within the e book, is known as a query of various sorts of human characters. There are some individuals for whom one thing quickens inside at any time when the chance of recent information presents itself. Why that occurs, why the soul responds like that, is a thriller, and Socrates tells numerous myths about why that is likely to be, however it simply appears to be a truth and never everybody has it.
Do you suppose there’s something value figuring out whatever the price?
Self-knowledge might 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 the whole lot that everybody else might 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 might be limits to this type of factor, however Socrates assumes that each one self-knowledge is in the long run going to be useful since you are actually clear to your self and that figuring out itself makes individuals good. As soon as you realize, the facility of your ignorance is not holding you hostage.
Do you suppose that’s true? I don’t suppose so.
No, I don’t. And it’s onerous to imagine that Socrates actually thought that. You may see it in the best way he offers with different individuals within the Platonic dialogues, you see that he has a number of information about how individuals fall wanting that.
Yeah, I might undoubtedly see a case being made for all the time desirous to know summary truths and truths concerning the exterior world. However relating to self-knowledge, generally once you peer inward, what you discover is that you just’re only a bundle of contradictions that may’t be squared, and I’m undecided it’s essentially good to be intimately acquainted with that and to get hung up on that.
There’s a method wherein it’s, and that’s the Montaigne possibility. The image Montaigne offers of us within the essays is that we’re precisely what you simply mentioned, and his recommendation is to reside with it. Simply go along with it. You’re a contradiction.
I believe that’s simpler mentioned than carried out, although it’s most likely smart. However do you suppose there’s a hyperlink, possibly even a obligatory hyperlink, between self-knowledge and information of the exterior world? In different phrases, on some degree, do we now have to know ourselves to be able to know the reality concerning the world exterior ourselves?
I can consider a pair solutions to that. I’m undecided which one can be mine. One is that this stuff are removable. I keep in mind spending a yr on the Institute for Superior Examine, and I might generally go and sit on this place the place the scientists and mathematicians have been, and you can inform these individuals simply had no self-awareness by way of how individuals reacted to them. Maybe they have been simply wrapped up of their issues and so they have been discovering issues.
Alternatively, one barrier to us in figuring out issues concerning the world is to know what constitutes figuring out, and that requires an evaluation of ourselves. After which the third sense, whereas not strictly obligatory, the train of making an attempt to know oneself is a form of coaching train for inquiring concerning the world exterior.
I do need 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 data, 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?
Relating to entire 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. Which means you don’t know learn how to act, and for those who don’t know learn how to act, it’s deeply disturbing since you need to have the ability to management your atmosphere and management issues so you may attain your individual ends.
And so a dissatisfaction with the current and an absence of data about learn how to enhance issues are spurs to think about that, simply as being 8 years outdated appeared easier 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 numerous issues or sure modifications 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 individual ignorance on account of this challenge?
I might 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 may’t do?
Philosophy that’s conscious of our ignorance is a step ahead. The best cognitive achievement of human beings is attending to possibly.
