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Which is better, blissful ignorance or painful awareness? And if you had the choice, which would you choose?

Forgive me, but in Sociology we're going over the Allegory of the Cave (damned Plato...) and it's getting me all scrambled.

Thing is, each in its own way is both appealing and off-putting. Ignorance is usually abhorred by society, simply because most people don't like to think themselves ignorant (ha, the first step is knowing what you don't know...) but then, painful awareness also kinda sucks. Remember how simple styrofoam cups were before we learned about a thing called the ozone layer?

The irony is, everyone is already in their own way painfully aware- we make each other so. If you are aware enough to want to choose ignorance, it's too late. If there were a way to sort of self-lobotomize, clean-slate your head and live life simple and happy with daisies and frolicking bunnies, it would feel like heaven. But we hold knowledge so dear- could I honestly do that to myself, even for blind happiness?

Mentally handicapped people are among the happiest people in the world, because life is so simple for them most of the time. But they're also commonly derided (albeit by the heartless... I admit that) and almost universally condescended to. I have the haunting suspicion that even with ignorance I would know what I was missing, and if not, I still would hate having others know of my ignorance and think less of me for it.

It's all so convoluted. Why the hell do we value others' opinions of us, anyway? Especially if we're happy. I would rather everyone be blissfully ignorant together. Or painfully aware. All or none.

Like that smart pill question- if you could take a pill or injection that increased your intelligence with no side effects, would you? My dad said, "Only if everyone could take it." Sometimes he's pretty smart.

Argh. I hardly even wonder anymore why I feel so torn on this (I'm like a dog on a bone with intellectual hypotheticals- it's brain candy)- not like it's an option anyway. If absolute extremes could really exist in nature this would be an option, but they don't, so it isn't, so there! Ha.

Plato claimed that the unexamined life was not worth living. But the overexamined life pretty much sucks, too.

So poo on Plato. Them Greeks always were crazy funky toga folk.

Right now life's just me and a computer and herbal tea, and it's looking pretty good so far.

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