If Ignorance Is Bliss, Is Awareness Misery?
As children, we can experience each day with imagination and wonder. We explore our environments looking for opportunities to play and be creative. We laugh and enjoy spending time with friends and family. It can be a joyful experience and blissful place.
As we get older, our minds develop and we become more aware of what’s happening around us. We see and hear things differently. We learn to become aware of things in order to stay safe and avoid pain. We also think back to lessons learned sometimes even try to actively not repeat them, sometimes. As we learn and become more aware, we also feel sad or angry about how our world, and the people in it, have seemingly changed from what they were when we were younger. There’s disappointment, hurt, pain, and trauma. We may even find ourselves longing for the days when we were happier and really unaware of how the world is, or at least, now appears to be.
This leads us to ask ourselves, “Is ignorance bliss?” or even believing it is and we act accordingly. We can withdraw, distract, and even turn to addiction to self-medicate our way back into this apparent blissful state.
The reality is: Ignorance is a lack of knowledge or information, and even awareness. It can also also be a choice. We may not want to know or learn something we think may bring us more pain or shame.
So, how do we move from a state of ignorance to a state of awareness? Often, we don’t choose to do this. We experience something that causes us to “wake up” or become more aware. When this happens, we can feel shocked or ashamed by what we didn’t know. We can also become defensive because nobody really enjoys being exposed to their own ignorance. It can feel painful and shameful.
It can feel that way. But, does it need to?
Have you ever become aware of something that you felt grateful for or relieved to learn? Think about when someone illuminated something for you or you recognized a blind spot on your own.
For instance, you’re about to give a presentation to a large group of people and you learn that recently had a large manufacturing plant close in their community, causing massive job losses. As a result of learning this, you remove your joke about losing your first job as a kid. Or, someone tells you that you have a habit of saying, “Listen” or tapping your ear when you want people to pay attention during a lecture, and you are about to speak to a group of people who are deaf and have an interpreter provided.
Think about how you feel when you can help someone become aware of something and it helps them tremendously. You show them a better way to do something that saves them time or makes a process easier. Or, you tell them something about themselves that helps them connect better with people and they end up meeting new people, and having new experiences as a result of this information. It’s an amazing feeling to help people! Of course, done in a loving and celebratory way.
There can be a tendency in people to make someone else feel bad, ashamed, or even stupid for not knowing something. This behavior reinforces the negative feelings we can have when we learn something new or become aware of something. How about being supportive, vulnerable, and even celebrating with them when they learn something new?
If we want to move into a space of awareness more freely, creating a safe and positive environment is essential to promoting this behavior. Each of us has ignorance in some area or on some level. It’s part of being human and not being a KIA (know it all). Supporting each other as we learn and become aware fosters more of this behavior. The opposite is also true. When we shame people for being ignorant or a lack of knowledge, we create environments where people are less likely to be open or share what they don’t know.
We tend to put more value on answering questions confidently, even if the answer is wrong or doesn’t make sense, than saying we don’t know or are unsure of the answer. Answers are synonymous with opinions these days.
To answer the question, “Is ignorance bliss?” We can look at the Dunning Kruger Effect, a term coined by the two Cornell psychologists, Justin Kruger and David Dunning, who discovered it from a series of experiments. It is basically where we over or underestimate our abilities because of our own incompetence. According to Adi Jaffe Ph.D and professor of psychology at UCLA:
The basis of the DKE effect: The less competent you are at something socially or intellectually, the more confident you will be in your abilities in that area.
When talking about what the research asserted from Dunning and Kruger’s research, Dr. Jaffe states in Psychology Today they found incompetent people will tend to “overestimate their abilities, fail to recognize genuine ability in others, and not recognize the extremity of their inadequacy” (Jaffe, psychologytoday.com).
There is definitely a cost to ignorance, not only to ourselves, but also to others. We add to the problems instead of being part of the solutions when we act as though we have knowledge, even though we don’t.
We must reframe the way we see awareness: Awareness isn’t about shame or guilt, it’s an opportunity to learn and elevate!