Ignorance Is Bliss

Product Information

Not necessarily. While the idiom can apply to certain scenarios, it's not a universal truth. Often, knowledge and understanding are beneficial and preferred.

In psychological consumer behavior studies, there is also what is known as the “blissful ignorance effect.” It turns out, consumers who know a great deal of information about a product aren’t usually as happy with it as people who have less knowledge about it. Experts say this is because the more information a consumer has, the greater their expectations and the more likely they are to be let down. If a person already knows how a product works, they might easily dismiss it if it has any problems or feel as if they didn’t buy the right thing. The phrase "ignorance is bliss" frequently appears in pop culture, usually referring to the idea of avoiding distressing truths or realities. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.Grey's poem is quite famous, as is the phrase "ignorance is bliss" and much has been written on it, but the the core meaning is quite simple.

The idea presented by Thomas Gray and expressed in the stanza of the poem containing ignorance is bliss—chiefly that it’s sometimes better not to know one’s fate or the outcome of a given scenario—certainly wasn’t new at the time the work was written. It had been stated around 409 BC by the Greek playwright Sophocles and even quoted by the scholar Erasmus in the 16th century. What’s more, the similar saying what you don’t know can’t hurt you dates to around 1576. However, the first use of the precise wording ignorance is bliss can be traced to Thomas Gray’s poem. It has been used as a common phrase in the English language since then.Remember that Ecclesiastes begins with "Vanity, vanity, vanity--all is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2) and goes on to explicate this in exhaustive detail.