||||Weblog.LileDevil.Net

Is it better to know or not to know, a question that has been driving me for several years now.
The choice not to know is easy, you dont have to put extra effort in figuring out how things are really connected, you can close your eyes for whatever happens around you and wont be bothered by the many things you could have found out. One of the quotes that describes this is “Ignorance is Bliss”. I will first get into this.
Definitions
Ignorance: a state of being uninformed.
Bliss: a state of profound satisfaction, happiness and joy, a constant state of mind, undisturbed by gain or loss.

So when is someone ignorant? when he just isnt being informed or when he chooses not to be informed? I think that both are a form of ignorance, the first being a natural ignorance without the reason of achieving “bliss”, the second is the person that avoids getting information or doing research after a certain topic to keep his life and mindset save from leaving the “bliss”. Such makes me wonder tho, would they really have a more blissful life because they ignore whats going around them? Will you really prevent getting confronted with topics when you ignore them?
I dont think so, we live in a world that changes rapidly, some say even changes too fast. This means that choices of today will be visible tomorrow more then any other time in history of mankind. What if you just dont think about how political choices affect your lifestyle, you will be confronted with it. In a dutch news article earlier this week it stated that the dutch population would vote differently then their parlement in 50% of the cases. So if dutch people are ignorant to their politics, thinking it will work out alright, they will be confronted with something they dont want.
Same on environmental aspect, tho I am no green peace activists, it takes no rocket scientist to know that we need to take good care of our planet. The plants and trees that grow on there provide us with oxygen and food. The animals that live on there provide us with food in many different ways(eg. milk, eggs & honey). Now we can ignore our personal responsibility in order to preserve our planet or be less ignorant and take our responsibility. If we all ignore our responsibility it’s quite certain it will come back to us sooner or later. Scientist already predict with our current populationgrowth within several decades we wont have enough land to both house all the people and grow enough food for them.

Also the world around us is hardening, we see more violence and misery then ever before. Television channels and movies are constantly pushing the edges of what’s acceptable. Did you know that in the first Rambo movie only 1 person was killed, while in the sequels in chronological order: 69, 132 and 236 people were killed. A few years ago it will still big news if someone was victim of senseless violence, nowadays if hardly even reaches the local newspaper. Charity organisations are even photoshopping/video-editing footage of disasters for fundraising by adding flies and dirt to it. The reason they give for doing so is since otherwise people clearly dont seem to be moved by those pictures anymore and therefor not donate. Every time I hear something like that, i gotta think of this song of the manic street preachers “if you tolerate this, then your children will be next”

And that’s what it will be all about, we live right here, right now and will have to choose what we really wanna tolerate. Do we really want to live in a democracy where politicians clearly have no idea what the people really want, do we want our children to grow up on a planet where food and clean drinking water will become more scarce and where violence and misery will only increase?

If we ignore all those things happening, will that really give that bliss that saying is claiming?