ignorance is bliss, but the unexamined life is not worth living

Ignorance can be bliss. If you're seriously ill but don't know it, then you have all the bliss that comes with not being ill. The same is true if you're about to get fired but think you're being called in for a promotion. Or if you think you're a charming person but everyone hates you.

And indeed, if you're anything like me, you've once or twice avoided going to the doctors because you don't want to hear bad news. Or you've avoided exposing yourself to tough criticism because you don't want to know if you're doing something wrong. Or you've held a concerning looking letter in your hands a few moments longer than necessary because if you don't open it, it's a bit like there's been no bad news... right?

To will ignorance for the sake of bliss is a common enough thing. But what kind of person would choose that as their default? For most of us, these are some of our more shameful moments. We'd much prefer to be calm and pragmatic in the face of bad news. Why? For the very obvious reason that we have the problem even if we don't know we do, and the best thing to do with a problem is solve it. Simple.

OK, but it's hard to solve problems, and I like bliss.

Ignorance can be bliss, but being completely and desperately stumped on a troubling problem can be bliss. This is why you end up with people who devote their whole lives to science, maths, philosophy and so on--it's not because they're easy.

What makes you happy is reprogrammable. It depends on what ideas you have. So if ignorance can make you happy, and problem solving can make you happy, then there's nothing in it except what's better for you.

I think this would be a nice way to interpret 'the unexamined life is not worth living,' it's not worth living because there's no reason to prefer it to the examined one.

Socrates would hate self-help

At the birth of Western philosophy lies Socrates who preached that, ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’ As philosophy has continued to develop from traditions largely put forth by this man—fallibilism, philosophy as a critical dialogue, and a need to understand and question the concepts we take for granted—it has in an important sense moved away from the examined life. This is very unfortunate.

So concerned with fundamental truths about the world and about human nature (and as it should be) philosophy has evolved almost a distaste for the personal. Even ethical and political theories only touch upon what could be considered guidance. They dampen their feet at the pool but don’t dive in.

There will on trend be more talk of what an individual owes society, than what you owe your friend, or your family member, or your lover, or your colleague. Philosophy is more interested in what counts as knowledge, then how one makes discoveries. Whether happiness is a value is of more interest than if there are good or bad ways to be happy and if so what they are.

These questions are less fundamental, but they are still very general and very important question about humans and about reality, and so they are undoubtedly philosophical.

I suppose the assumption for many of these more personal matters is that they belong more to the realm of psychology. Discovery is psychology. Happiness is psychology. Healthy relationships are psychology. Particularly self-help gets given a lot of these questions. But it would be a mistake to think that Socrates examined life lives on in psychology and self-help.

The problem with putting these questions in this domain is that we don’t get deep enough answers.  Self-help is very subjective. The individual isn’t so much searching for truth as identifying their current goals and reorganising a few mistaken methods to arrive at those goal. Socrates would disapprove.

Socrates would want to question our goals and learn about why some of them were in error. Socrates would want to question if we should even have goals. Socrates would want to scan through and examine as close to every thought and assumption motivating every single piece of the puzzle on the table. (at least the spirit of Socrates would, whether the man himself was capable of doing this is a difficult question given we can't even guarantee he ever existed). 

Self help is just too lazy for this end. Self-help mirrors the guru style of Eastern philosophy. Western philosophy can do better. And so I pledge: let us bring the examined life into the world of high standard truth seeking of western philosophy.