Do you believe in Evolution?

[jimboalee]

So, does that mean you are unwilling to learn on your own, or will actively ignore facts that are presented to you too?



It is ignorance (look up the definition of the word). We are all ignorant in different areas. Now there are several kinds of ignorance.

There's the open kind - e.g. 'I don't know because I have never heard of this before, but now I have heard of it, I am willing to learn.'

There's the closed kind - e.g. 'I don't know about it, and I don't care'

And then there's the aggressive kind, e.g. 'I don't know about it, but I am going to insist on my opinion anyway'.



They aren't. They just fall into the second or third category of ignorance.

Some people do not like to be told that there are things that they don't know, or people who know better than them. They take it as an attack on their sense of themselves. I'd suggest that if you want to learn anything, you have to get over this pretty quickly. I meet so many people working in universities who have far wider and deeper knowledge than me in so many areas. I don't force my opinion about their subject on them, I accept that they have something to teach me. And if I have no time to learn what they have to offer, I just have to accept that there are things I don't know and can't know. I certainly don't fill that gap with some belief about it which I will insist on even to people who know better, or try to tell them that what they know is somehow equivalent to my ignorant belief.

No, that's what's called "Blissful ignorance".

Believe it or not, there are a lot of people around who treasure their happiness above the endless struggle of accumulating knowledge.

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"..

 

[Flying_Monkey]

No, that's what's called "Blissful ignorance".

'Blissful ignorance', I would suggest is only really applicable to a state of innocence, of being genuinely unaware - only very young children exist totally in that state all the time. Chosing to be ignorant, or even affecting a lack of knowledge, are very different. And trying to judge others on the basis of deliberately of being deliberately ignorant is another thing again. On the other hand, admitting the limits of one's knowledge is essential.

Believe it or not, there are a lot of people around who treasure their happiness above the endless struggle of accumulating knowledge.

And, believe it or not, I'd be one of them*. I guess this kind of weak inference is what happens when you judge people based on very little, erm, knowledge...

If you're really interested in moving beyond this superficial banter, in my view, knowledge and happiness are not opposites, nor are 'happiness' or 'knowledge' in themselves the only worthwhile goals either to be pursued or to be compared. Both personal happiness and happiness as 'goals' can be mere self-indulgence, egotism and even damaging for others. You can be entirely ignorant, happy and utterly cruel for example. My idea of happiness comes from the deep and meaningful relationships I have with others and with the natural world. And relationships always and inevitably involve the acquisition of knowledge, the development of understanding and the application of that understanding back into those realtionships - as in raising my son, gardening, community development or just growing old together with my wife, to name just four examples that are amongst the most important to me.