Religion aside, It takes a fool to equate ignorance with bliss. In the context of the familiar cliché, “ignorance is bliss”, willful ignorance is little more than an illusionary shield used to protect a fragile mind from destabilizing information and ideas. Whenever I hear it, I wonder why anyone would want to protect themselves from information. Presumably, information perceived to be depressing or incongruent with an individual’s experience can be unsettling. The reality is, information and ideas are not always helpful or positive, and as a result learning can, at times, be a painful and regressive experience. Out of abject fear, individuals self censor and make excuses for important subjects outside the scope of their understanding. Ignorance has its place. It is important if only because ignorance has a role in our everyday lives. Specifically; secrets are a passive form of managing ignorance, while lies actively propagate ignorance.
In an environment rife with ignorance, a genius formulates tests. In nature, these tests manifest in the form physical experiments. Archimedes, Galileo, Copernicus, Newton and Franklin were notorious for their brilliant experiments. In society, tests could be refutations of presumed secrets or unverifiable truths. Thomas Jefferson and his political rival Alexander Hamilton exposed secrets, ignorance and lies in early America. The truths they revealed about consensual government have benefited all mankind. Likewise, the pursuit of universal truths might be a social alternative to hidden or socially implicit truths. In religion and spirituality, John Locke interpreted freedom of thought and expression as natural rights for all inhabitants of God’s Kingdom. In the spiritual realm tests are equally if not more, important than physical or social tests. Maintaining faith in one’s beliefs through hardship is the standard quiz. Information post mortem, is inherently unknowable by the mortal mind. In God’s Kingdom, it would appear faith pushes the stakes higher than any other.