Blissfully Ignorant?

"Is a man better off not knowing that his wife or girlfriend is seeing another man behind his back?  If the government is doing something to us secretly, like placing some sterilization agent in our drinking water, aren't we better off not knowing about it and just blissfully going about our daily business?"

There is a famous saying that ignorance is bliss – if you are not aware of something bad, it can’t make you unhappy.  I guess this is basically true, unless you are the sort to obsess about the negative possibilities in the absence of evidence to the positive contrary.

But still, most of us find it more comfortable to not think about possible bad outcomes and prefer to either hear good news or nothing at all.

I got to thinking about this as I have been contemplating the MRI scan I have scheduled for this morning.  I am going to get a complete and detailed scan of my spine and hip joints.  It is long overdue, and I really do need to know what is wrong so that I can get the proper treatment. 

But I am worried.  What if the news is bad?

I’ve had occasional pain in my lower back for about 15 years, and it has gotten worse in the last three years or so.  But the pain in my hips has been happening since last October and became almost crippling on the left side back in January.  A general consultation with a chiropractor in Colorado, along with my own research, suggested that it was sciatica: a pinching or inflammation of the sciatic nerve.  Even after a chiropractor here in Kharkiv got the pain mostly under control, the underlying discomfort continued – on both sides.  I have not been really pain-free for close to a year.

Recently, the right hip decided to flare up.  It’s not been as painful as the January surprise that ruined my trip to the USSA, but it’s bad enough and my walking mechanics are messed up.  This has been the motivation to get the MRI.  Absent good imagery, it has not been possible to know for certain whether the problem is actually in the hip or somewhere in the lower spine.

But while I want to know the underlying problem, I am also afraid to find out.  I have a fear that there might be an untreatable degeneration of bone or other tissue in my hip joints, perhaps related to arthritis or something.  What I want from the MRI is good news, something treatable.  What I don’t want to know is any bad news.  So I have trepidation about the scan.

Similarly, I have been going along for quite a while preferring not to know too many details about what is going on around my heart.  I had a couple of stents inserted back in 2005, and I’ve occasionally worried about more problems cropping up… perhaps even more than just “problems.”

Last week I went in for a cardiac checkup, and I got good reports.  My EKG was perfect, and an ultrasound scan detected nothing to be concerned about.  But I am not fully convinced.  Maybe this is a case of obsessing on the unknown potential negative – something I think I have been doing ever since I got the stents.

It occurred to me that, if the MRI goes well on my back, I might want to go back and get a detailed heart scan.  But, then again, I might become aware of something that would shatter my blissful ignorance.

And, really, I could really use some good, old-fashioned “bliss” these days.

Isn’t it Better to Not Know?

There are so many situations in life in which people are unaware of something bad happening around them, and they go on with their lives unconcerned.  These can be individual, personal things that would wreck the happiness of a particular person if he or she found out, or they can be big secrets that could affect the lives of hundreds, thousands or even millions of people.

Very often we say that we are better off not knowing.  But I’m not sure.

Is a man better off not knowing that his wife or girlfriend is seeing another man behind his back?  If she is slick enough to cheat without getting caught, and he is none the wiser, maybe it’s better for him to not know.  Sure, others might know, and they might laugh at him secretly for his ignorance.  But his “bliss” has not been disturbed. 

The fact is, unfortunately, that very few cheaters are so clever, or their husbands or wives so blind, that they don’t at least get a sense of what is happening eventually.  And the anguish of suspecting is exceeded only by the bitterness of discovering the betrayal.  Bliss gone!

And if the government is doing something to us secretly, like placing some sterilization agent in our drinking water (as a member of the Obamshevik administration famously suggested), are we better off not knowing about it and just blissfully going about our business? 

Wouldn’t we have been happier if we had NOT known that the USSA government was secretly checking our phone records, reading our emails, and checking what Web sites we visited?  Edward Snowden may have felt that we should know about these things, but the guy really messed up a lot of people’s bliss.

So in many ways a good case can be made for just being blissfully unaware of the truth.

Protecting Others

This seems to be especially true when we try to protect those we care about from the emotional impact of knowing the “unhappy truth.”  We often go to great lengths to protect our children from knowing too much about the dark side of life so that they can enjoy the naivete of childhood and just “being kids.”

We know that eventually we have to warn our kids about the dangers that lurk for them in the world, but we try to put it off for as long as we can.  We hope they never have to learn about death, but we know that eventually a grandparent or someone else will pass to the other side, and the subject will have to be broached.  Still, we feel that the longer they can go on just playing happily and not knowing about bad things, the better off they will be.

Similarly, we often try to keep bad news from the adults we love.  A man who is worried about losing his job might try to keep the troubles and his fears to himself and not share them with his wife, less they make her worry too.  He hopes that the problem can be solved without her ever having to know.  These days, a working woman might do the same with her husband.

And so often we try to hide serious illnesses or other problems from those we love because we don’t want their bliss to be diminished through worry about us.  When an aged parent is very ill and a doctor tells us that the end is around the corner, we often try to shield the parent from that knowledge, encourage him or her to hold on and get better, and believe that he or she will close out life a little happier if there is still some hope.

Not for Me

With the exception of trying to preserve the aura of a beautiful world for our youngest children, I don’t believe that ignorance is bliss.  I certainly prefer to know the truth, even if it is an unhappy truth.  And I am especially sensitive to finding out after the fact that I have been lied to – even if the other person thought it was for my benefit.

It is better, in my opinion, to know as much as possible, even if it is not pleasant.  Certainly, I want to be happy, even “blissful.”  But I don’t want that at the expense of being uninformed or, even worse, ignorant.  Ultimately, my happiness is my own choice, and I prefer to make informed choices.

So, in a few hours I will be off to my MRI session.  It’s time to become informed.