Lively debate this evening at the dinner table.
You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth.
© 2026 – SoulSequel
34 responses to “Is ignorance bliss?”
Maybe I am not lively today, but I think I have already taken the blue pill. I believe whatever I want now. Does the red pill tell me what’s going to happen before it does? I wouldn’t want that at all.
I don’t think ignorance is bliss. I think taking time away and clearing the mind is bliss, but I can’t be ignorant when people are suffering. I am strong and capable of taking on pain and working through it. In my 20s, I didn’t pay attention to a whole lot of social issues except the ones I was working on. I don’t silo issues anymore as I see how interconnected they all are.
@Gina
One has to go far far deeper into the rabbit hole to see the roots of the interconnectedness of society’s problems.
But our feelings tend to keep us on the surface. Like it or not pain is a part of life. It’s essential for growth. Suffering is what our feelings try to do with it. Often it is not the suffering of others that motivates us, but rather our own feelings in relation to it.
So we arrive at an untenable situation, epitomized in a parent taking a child to the doctor for an essential shot to save their life. Do we bow to our feelings to alleviate pain and suffering in the short run? (Just because it’s the dreaded pain and suffering dammit!)
Or do we Master our feelings knowing that in the long run a bit of pain and suffering now will mean a longer better life later on?
Which then also begs the question, is our main concern the suffering of others — or just ourselves?
I am being blunt because I am convinced that many of our society’s pop ideologies right now are playing footsies with a very very very dangerous ideology that has decimated every society it touched.
@Gina
Completely agree. You’re completely blue pilled.
@Weenis meh
Red pill. But my life is already very far down the rabbit hole. Was never offered the blue pill.
One pill makes you larger, the other makes you small, those pills in Larry Fishburne’s hands, they don’t do anything at all.
I’m sticking with the green anti-pill.
@luftballooneyegouge
Sometimes we can generate a third option.
But with a lot of things in life we cannot.
@griz
@luftballooneyegouge
Lol!
(Minus the child on drugs of course)
@griz
Those are some of the model shots the lady took who painted the Vanhalen 1984 cover.
@griz
It’s a very versatile pic.
@luftballooneyegouge
Lol again!
But keep practicing. It is possible to shit in the woods without anointing your own leg or falling over!
(Or wiping yourself with poison ivy!)
Perhaps ignorance is only bliss for as long as it is ignorant of its ignorance?
As soon as we open that first door of learning and conscious awareness . . . the moment we start to suspect that the world is what it is and not just what our feelings say it is (or want it to be), there is no going back.
At least not without creating a degenerative psychopathy in ourselves.
Let’s remember that people scrambling to cling to even the smallest measure of ignorant bliss, is what allowed marxism-leninism stalinism in maoism and fascism to march their way across societies to their utter demise.
I choose the red pill. I would even suggest that our full human potential can only be achieved in the red pill.
That first Apple that Eve consumed and offered to Adam . . . Was probably not blue!
@griz I think you may have over analyzed the question. Step back for a second and consider bliss without any complexity that is bound to occur in any human being. It’s hard but totally simplify.
Happiness is an extension of contentment in my opinion. Awareness of “more” (knowledge, evil, better…you pick). What you are not aware of cannot affect or influence your contentment. Being ignorant of the negative could allow you to focus on the positive; ergo: bliss.
I think we have a tendency to seek out things to worry about. I know I do. The first thing I consider when I wake up in the middle of the night is :what don’t I want to think about that will keep me awake? and then I proceed to think of them.
OK, let’s consider your position on this. You have sought out, perhaps through study, things that totally suck. Perhaps you can DO something about a couple of issues that you have to select from the billions of things that suck. What about ALL of the other things you have made yourself aware of that just keep on keeping on? They sit on the edges of your mind causing anything from mild to deep concern. Unless you enjoy the opposite of bliss; you’re screwed.
@spitfire3dc
I can do purely hypothetical speculation; but to me it seems like only doing half the job. I always try to go that extra step to invite pragmatic application.
(Which may seem like over analyzing if the intent is to keep things purely hypothetical)
I think someone who has no concerns is simply not engaged with life. They are perhaps trying to bliss themselves out in some alternative non-reality?
(Which we all need to do from time to time; but not to stay there and divorce ourselves from reality.)
What I think we need is some effective mechanism to keep concern from turning into worry. I hear what you are saying about the prevalence to worry. My mother was a master of it and try to saddle me with it.
Ha! My intent is not to study things that suck; but things in the order of, “How the hell did I/we end up here??”. Or if experience catches it soon enough, “Where the heck is this road likely to take us?”. (Which is why I study things like history, philosophy, art, spirituality, theology, mythology etc).
And that I find things that suck along these paths, are simply an indication that many things in life just suck!
Some of these things exist entirely within my personal realm, meaning I can do something about them.
The worry for everything else exists entirely within my personal realm, meaning I can do something about that too.
And then I reach out into the common realm with my observations and the spirit of the teacher. Just because I cannot solve a problem, does not mean there is not somebody out there today or tomorrow or a decade or a few generations from now who might be able to solve it IF they are aware of it.
IE, if they haven’t permanently blissed out into a non-reality, thinking that nothing they do can make a difference!
BTW, my spiritual experience also helps a lot with worry. It’s technically a sin against God to worry; meaning you doubt his ability to work all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
I know everything is going to work out wonderfully . . . for those who embrace and fellowship with the Spirit of Life and are true citizens of that Kingdom.
(And what sucks in this is that everyone can; but most won’t. So again, I teach. It’s one of my gifts.)
@griz Funny how I was thinking of the story of Adam and Eve this morning. Learning the difference between good and evil is a GOOD thing. But that story portrays it as bad, I don’t know why. Must’ve got twisted in the endless re-translations.
@georockstar09
It portrays it as an awakening. Is that bad? In so much as the pleasant dream is over perhaps.
I’m also aware that our man-made ideologies have painted it as something bad; and raked in a tidy profit (in money and control) in claiming to have the proper penitence solution. ( Punitive self-abasement and religious works)
My personal stance is that the Genesis stories are what they are: requiring neither worship nor editing nor dismissal.
I can explain that further if you would like.
@griz Thing is, I think that 1) they’ve been HIGHLY edited, and 2) to the point that they can be dismissed. There are some stories in there of historical significance, but not spiritual. There are stories of massacres portrayed as good things, when it was clearly a greedy grab using the banner of God as an excuse, when there is no evidence He would support that except “God spoke to them” (whether we believe that or not… I don’t know).
My point is, not a lot of people are able to tell which are the stories that have spiritual significances and which don’t, because they are all lumped together.
@georockstar09
Both religion and religious anti religion (atheism) have done us a great disservice in insisting on the extremes of these stories having to be either worshipped or dismissed. Even IF they were purely mythological or archetypical, they would still be of priceless anthropological value.
As for their being highly edited consider this:
For thousands of years cultures that we would consider primitive, lived in dire “fear of the Lord” if they should alter something they considered sacred and holy. For every one person that might have wanted to alter it there were dozens that would restore it to its original form.
Now consider that in current times, we often see only our own feelings as the most holy and sacred thing; and will justify either banning or altering ancient texts, history, national anthems, mythology etc on an authority no higher than how it makes us feel.
We are currently perhaps the greatest editors and alterers of things then of any generation before us.
Simply because “we don’t like something”.
@griz “As for their being highly edited consider this:
For thousands of years cultures that we would consider primitive, lived in dire “fear of the Lord” if they should alter something they considered sacred and holy.”
I don’t know. That NIV translation of the Bible, compared to the Henry James Bible, has quite a number of disturbing little tweaks that changed original meanings, making things sound… a teeny bit fanatical.
As I said, they have historical and anthropological value and have a place in those sciences. They do not, however, all of them have spiritual value, nor have a place in religion.
As for feelings, I’m not talking about feelings. I’m talking about truth. What REALLY happened. According to my own religion, which does not follow the Bible per-se, God would never lead one group of His creatures to dominate, oppress, or massacre another group of His creatures because one was more entitled than the other. Plain and simple. I specifically have I think Leviticus in mind, where one group of Jews was “told by God” to kill off another group of Jews when the second group refused to join in a massacre. So my argument is that God never talked to that first group in the first place. That is a lie that is in that text, imho.
@georockstar09
I find the NIV a very easy-reading “dynamic translation”, suitable for many, but not all things. There are “direct translations” like the NASB for intensive study, but they can be “clunky” (like trying to read a direction translation of French-to-English). There are others; plus there are very very old and reliable original-language versions, reliable parsing software, theological commentary. For those who truly want to know the truth of what was written there are options — including the Spiritual one of having direct access to and fellowship with “The Author”
But on the other hand, I’ve seen “The Woman’s Bible” and even “The Surfer’s Bible” that take considerable liberties with the original texts for the sake of serving the feelings of a group or agenda!
I’ve shared before that I’m not a fan of religion; or of any ideology that seems geared to spawn unthinking “ideologues” that can only spout “approved doctrine”.
My personal conviction is that what “really happened” is that Humans became “separated” from God (The Spirit of Life) and spent a lot of time trying to restore this on their own to no avail . . . and then God made a way possible.
The ‘exactly what happened’ at every other recorded place is just the backdrop of our trying to restore it — with the distinct possibility of there being a Divine plan: to prove to us once-and-for-all that we could not do it of our own strength, effort or volition.
What is entirely possible . . . is that those people were entirely Human. There’s a lot of what I would consider very “godly” ideas out there. But a lot can and does get lost as we try to set about them of our own strength, effort and volition.
As for dominating, oppressing, killing? It’s what we do; even when starting with the best of intentions. And not just us. They are apparent constants in Nature — yet somehow finding a balance that eludes us.
I’m not very accepting of many pop-philosophies and ideologies that propose these “natural” edicts are nothing but evil to be eradicated and to judge things by.
Sure, they’re not often “nice”; and our feelings don’t like them much. But they have been a fact of natural life since time began.
@griz
“As for dominating, oppressing, killing? It’s what we do; even when starting with the best of intentions.”
Except for “Thou shalt not kill.” But they broke that commandment and pillaged and plundered and claimed to be the people of God in order to justify their pillage and plundering. Except Jesus Christ would never do such a thing. In fact He would condemn such acts. Yes, we have our natural, animalistic nature. But we humans need to be spiritual beings, not animals. That’s the whole point of religion, to rise above that. Otherwise we may as well be like cows or birds in the field, gathering what we need, captive of our nature. That is – according to my own religion, that’s the point of religion.
I don’t have any ideologies. I’m just saying: I think whoever wrote Leviticus told a lie. The lie constitutes of massacres being approved by God, though the massacre itself did happen, from a historical perspective, and the lie was probably told for political reasons of the time. That’s it. That’s all I’m saying. Again, it’s not about feelings, it’s about justice. Moses, for instance gave us certain laws. The people in Leviticus broke those laws.
I should also add that this very story (Leviticus) has turned at least some people away from the religions of the Gospel, precisely because they recognized the hypocrisy – one Person says not to kill, another person goes ahead and kills for selfish gains and gets away with it. What are they supposed to learn from that, from a spiritual perspective?
@georockstar09
I would maintain that there is Pure Spirit and Truth with the possibility for deep Fellowship;: and religion is what happens when we try to franchise it to our gain/control.
I totally agree that the Old Testament account is a difficult one to reconcile against the teachings of Christ. Even Moses, who had allegedly then right in God’s presence, disobeyed.
It took more than two decades for the Bible as a whole to become reconciled in my mind is the unified tome about Humanity’s quest for reconciliation and restored fellowship with Life. (And this not through my study and wisdom but through growing Fellowship with the Spirit of Life, made possible by Christ)
So I doubt I can distill all of that to you it even many decades worth of Correspondence! It is there to be found but it’s not mine to give. ( it’s sort of follows the same rules of Fellowship; nobody else can do it for you)
But the long and the short of it is, that the old Covenant of reconciliation through law and works, didn’t work. But we are a stubborn enough species that we had to see for ourselves that it didn’t work. So that Covenant is over and complete and by no means our path to reconciliation and enlightenment.
It was simply a necessary precursor to the Covenant that is.
And a final thought on your conundrum of not killing. It would seem self-evident that there is a time and a place for righteous killing; whether single Judiciary cases or wars (ie, the war against fascism Nazism).
We are still in imperfectly human. And sometimes blood has to be shed for the sake of the journeys continuance.
Many of the “God-ordained” killings of the Old Testament that people struggle with, served the purpose of protecting the people from whom the Savior would come, and getting them to the place they needed to be for it to happen.
I know that’s only a partial possible answer.
@griz There was a previous conversation a while ago started by Spitfire, where we were talking about how the Bible was basically written by ordinary people with more or less good intentions, trying to record history, and that maybe some of it was later taken to be something else, in the wrong way. I don’t remember if you were part of that conversation.
Weenie made me realize maybe the blue pill wasn’t what I took. I overlooked the part that says the story ends. That’s just wrong, but so is falling into a rabbit hole. I will not take either pill. Pills kill. I will stick with the natural stuff, and take a hit off my bong and carry on as the bad ass warrior I am!
It seems most replies are taking this to a level associated with knowing about all things which, if I am interpreting responses correctly, might correlate to bad, versus good, things.
I just thought of another way to simplify the consideration of this question. we all know of our own physical mortality. If we were ignorant of that fact; would it make us feel better, or worse?
Of course, there are benefits to knowing our time is finite in that it can act as a motivator, but in balance; does it help us be happier in the broader context of our lives, or do we take on a more negative interpretation?
@spitfire3dc
That may be like asking the fish (of presumed Intelligence on par with our own) if it thinks the water (that defines it), helps it or hinders it.
All of our inherent and apparent definition and perspective is based on our physical mortality.
Without it we would be like the fish trying to fathom breathing without gills and moving without fins.
But evolutionary perspective, life DID move out onto the land and develop new assets necessary to thrive there.
To the “over-thinker”, it makes me wonder what assets we might have to develop to move beyond mortality-based physicality?
@griz I can’t say I agree with “All of our inherent and apparent definition and perspective is based on our physical mortality.”
Some, maybe even most, but by no means All.
I have no intention of seeing the Eiffel Tower before I die because I expect to die. If I get there, fine. If I don’t; no biggie. My reason to see it will be based on seeing it while I might be there based on the influence of eating food in France…and maybe imbibing in the grape juice. But I won’t even do that because I know I’m going to die.
I do like your last question though.
@spitfire3dc
I still think the analogy of a fish trying to contemplate life without water has . . . ah, legs.
(How evolutionarily droll am I today?!)
Neither. Who takes pills handed out to them by strangers? It’s totally unwise!
But if i had no choice probably the blue pill. But i wold also palm the red pill, just in case
Interesting question. I once took a biology class and learned that every single aspect of our body is the way it is in order to maximize our chances to perpetuate our genes. That made me a little depressed for some reason. It undermined the meaning of family love.
On the other hand, it shed a light of realism on the whole affair, and now that I know all that, I can be detached from family love and find the meaning of real (spiritual) love and fellowship, and that it comes through sacrifice of one’s self.
@georockstar09 how is homosexuality explained if all our genes are programmed for reproduction? Or even asexuality?
@Jear77
There are other kinds of reproduction besides copulation. You can raise a nephew, for instance. That way you would be perpetuating not 1/2 of your genes but at least 1/4, which is something.
I was given the blue pill at birth. The only red pill available to me now is critical thinking.