Michael Martin

Great Ideas II

Essay #1

Ignorance: Bliss or Barrier?

During even the briefest of skimmings through the first three chapters of the King

James Bible’s book of Genesis, the origin of the following idiom becomes immediately

evident: “Ignorance is Bliss.” Adam and Eve were quite literally living within a perpetual

state of bliss, an actual Heaven on Earth. The Garden of Eden was designed to be the

perfect, self sustaining habitat, as stated in verses 9-10: “​9 ​And out of the ground made

the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree

of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. ​10 ​And

a river went out of Eden to water the garden.” Adam and Eve were gifted with paradise,

the only stipulation for which was that the lovely couple keep their hands off of the fruit

of knowledge of good and evil. With as difficult a name to resist as it is to say five times

fast, it comes as no surprise that the story’s antagonist, the serpent, had a fairly easy

time convincing them to deviate from their divine mandate. As a result of this, Adam and

Eve gained, as the fruit’s name suggests, the distinct knowledge of good and evil. When

God was made aware of this, he was less than pleased at the blatant disobedience of

his subjects, and sentenced the two and their kin to eternal hardship and damnation: “​16
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow

thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule

over thee. ​17 ​And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of

thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not

eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of

thy life; ​18 ​Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb

of the field; ​19 ​In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the

ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” It

can be said that, ultimately, knowledge itself led to the downfall of paradise for Adam

and Eve, and that they would have been much better off had they simply chosen to

keep their eternal bliss at the price of that knowledge. Yet, is that truly the case? Is a life

of blind paradise truly preferable to one of wakeful suffering? This leads us to the

ultimate question regarding this subject: Are the benefits of knowledge worth its great

cost?

A student wishing to answer this question might first wish to look at an idiom that

acts as a contrasting parallel to the one discussed above: “Knowledge is Power.” This is

the idea, that without knowledge, mankind is nothing, has nothing, can do nothing.

Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” (from ​The Republic,​ 381 B.C.) insinuates that, without

knowledge, man is essentially comparable to a person chained up in a cave with no

knowledge of anything save for the shadows on the wall before him: “SOCRATES: Now

if they were able to say something about what they saw and to talk it over, do you not
think that they would regard that which they saw on the wall as beings? GLAUCON:

They would have to. SOCRATES: And now what if this prison also had an echo

reverberating off the wall in front of them [the one that they always and only look at]?

Whenever one of the people walking behind those in chains (and carrying the things)

would make a sound, do you think the prisoners would imagine that the speaker were

anyone other than the shadow passing in front of them? GLAUCON: Nothing else, by

Zeus! SOCRATES: All in all, I responded, those who were chained would consider

nothing besides the shadows of the artifacts as the unhidden. GLAUCON: That would

absolutely have to be.” Plato’s idea here is that, because we would be unable to make

any informed decisions based upon the environment in which we live, the lack of

knowledge in that regard would be nothing short of debilitating. Nothing that these “cave

men,” so to speak, was even slightly accurate at all. This really has nothing to do with

the intelligence of the men in the cave, but rather with their lack of perspective. Trevor

Noah makes a similar argument from a distinctly different perspective in his memoir,

Born a Crime​ (2016), stating that human nature allows for dehumanization of others

without the knowledge of the other party’s humanity: ​“We live in a world where we don’t

see the ramifications of what we do to others because we don’t live with them. It would

be a whole lot harder for an investment banker to rip off people with subprime

mortgages if he actually had to live with the people he was ripping off. If we could see

one another’s pain and empathize with one another, it would never be worth it to us to

commit the crimes in the first place.” According to Noah, without knowledge, humanity

has no place within us to exist, and the only things of which we are capable is the
hatred and subjugation of our peers. So clearly, based upon the evidence presented

above, knowledge is an essential part of our identity as humans, for without it, there

would be nearly nothing to separate us from the other mammals that surround us on a

daily basis.

However, it is important to remember that the question presented was not “Is

knowledge an important part of human existence,” because it clearly is such. The

question to ponder was pertaining to the consequences that come with knowledge,

consequences that are, in a way, fueling the crushing existentialism that lies beneath

many an individual’s jovial facade. Knowledge in its own right is undeniably a positive

thing. It is not until knowledge is presented in the less than optimistic context of nihilism

that it becomes a burden to one’s very soul. This is because, according to nihilism, even

the most influential person in the history of mankind is absolutely meaningless in the

grand scheme of the universe. The rest of the universe is so much larger than the

planet Earth, which we deem to be rather gargantuan, that any human would be more

than hard pressed to so much as make a ripple, let alone a wave. Why then, is it

important for us to read the news every morning, to see the atrocities that are

committed daily across the globe, or to watch people in power destroy, knowingly or

otherwise, the lives of some unfortunate men and women around us, when it all means

naught? Why must we even have the ability to comprehend our own existence when

such comprehension will bring with it nothing short of fear and depression? Trevor Noah

says that it is important to know about the awful things that happen in the world so that
we can work to prevent them from happening again, but what can one person do really?

That, in essence is the cost of knowledge, according to nihilism: Eternal inner turmoil

with no hope for actual change.

Yet, how would one even be capable of comprehending the cost of one’s own

knowledge at all without having access to knowledge itself? Is it not more important that

we are allowed to decide for ourselves whether or not the price tag attached to our

knowledge is a worthwhile cost? The French philosopher Descartes once said this

about knowledge: “I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that

nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no

senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is

there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is

certain.” Such is a very unlikely theory, but the true argument therein is that the beauty

of knowledge lies within our ability to speculate. Descartes may have believed that

nothing that we see, hear, taste, touch, or smell are truly present, but one thing he did

know is that he existed. “Cogito ergo sum,” he said. “I think, therefore I am.” Despite the

crushing weight that accompanies the sheer knowledge of our own existence, we need

it more than anything, for without human knowledge and sentience, how are we to know

that we exist at all?