19.06.25. Back to reality..

19.06.25. BackTo reality...

The Publishing home of Political Critics has late published a Polish translation of the book, about which its author, Mark Milla “The American historian of ideas, the philosopher of politics, a prof. at Columbia University,” writes, “is rather unusual.” Milla proves in her that each and all 1 of us is characterized on the 1 hand The will to knowand on the another hand – The will of ignorance. At any point, the components of this paradox even specify as the desire for knowledge and The desire for ignorance, stressing that in peculiar the second is absolutely universal. This applies to us, as indicated above, individually and grouply. Also, politicians who manage full states are not free from this paradox, and frequently like not to research the various problems, although they talk about them and make the related decisions, which, of course, results in serious, sometimes individual and over-individual consequences. The book has a crucial title: Blissful ignorance. Those who like not to know (in Polish, Andrzej Wojtasik, Warsaw 2025).

At the entrance, the author resembles an allegorical communicative known as the Plato cave and announces that his further consideration requires systematic references to this story. Here to remind you: in Plato's version of the cave sat men, whose legs and necks had shackles so that they could not turn their heads and saw only shadows of what happened outside the cave. Plato assumes that 1 of them successfully managed to get out of the cave and that he then returned to her to free others. But they did not believe what he told them about the outside planet and preferred to stay in the cave forever (Plato, State, Rights, trans. Władysław Witwicki, Wydawnictwo Antyk, Kęty 1999, pp. 221-225).

Milla performs a circumstantial parody of Plato's story. In his version, thanks to the aid of a woman, 1 of the men trapped in the cave actually manages to get out of it. He besides takes with him a sitting next to the boy. The female who freed them from the shackles asks them to aid others leave the cave erstwhile they become accustomed to the outside world. A man promises to do it. He sees outer space as a paradise, but he intends to keep and return for others. At first, he besides wants to affect the boy, but he regrets taking distant the joy of surviving in the sun. However, the boy does not want to stay outside, prefers to “go home”. And he does.

We Introduction The books then read:

Aristotle taught that “all men are born to desire to know” (Metaphysics, t. I, trans. Tadeusz Żeleźnik, Lublin 1986, p. 2). Our own experience teaches us that all people are besides born with a desire for ignorance, sometimes highly strong. This has always been the case, but in the past of humanity there are certain periods – and we live in 1 of them – erstwhile denying the apparent truths seems to gain an advantage, as if any attacking psyche bacteria spread by unknown ways, and the antidote abruptly lost its power. Hypnotized crowds follow the prophets preaching nonsense, irrational rumors prompt people to do fantastic deeds, and magical reasoning dispels common sense and knowledge. You can always find direct causes of specified an increase in opposition to fact – these may be historical events, social changes or fresh intellectual currents and spiritual ideas that promise “a break from reality”. However, the origin lies deep within us and the planet itself, which ignores our wishes.
Many things happen in the planet that are not what we think, and there are things that we would alternatively not see. any of them are uncomfortable truths about ourselves; they accept the hardest. Others relate to external reality; erstwhile we get to know it, they take distant our beliefs and feelings, which someway made life easier for us and made it better – at least that's what we think. Disappointment is simply a painful but common experience, and we should not be amazed that it came from a forgotten English poem [the authorship of the eighteenth century English poet Thomas Gray] phrase Ignorance is blind (Ignorance is bliss) became a popular proverb (Blissful ignorance...( p. 13).

A small further, we read:

My experience shows that the will of ignorance most profoundly shows the works of human imagination – ancient myths, spiritual writings, theatre arts and contemporary novels. [...] By exposing the deceptions of the will of ignorance, literature exposes us to ourselves, and that is its purpose. What we deficiency – or at least I deficiency myself among my own goals – is the unethical reflection on the will of ignorance and the immense multi-form function it plays in human existence. How is it that we are creatures who want to know and not know? How is it possible that these 2 contradictory desires inhabit 1 mind? What function does opposition to cognition execute in shaping our emotions, our knowing of ourselves and the planet around us? How did he influence our social life, our religions and our cultures? Socrates claimed that "without investigation [of himself and others] life has no value for man"—which does not show that the constantly explored life has specified value. Where does that leave us? (Blissful ignorance..., pp. 18-19).

Following specified announcements, it will be an chance to accompany the survey of texts presented by the author’s book, where the main problem is avoiding self-knowledgeAnd the planet we live in. Among them he presents Mill's remarks about Sophocles' tragedy King Oedipus, discovering how carefully her hero avoids knowing about himself and his identity. He prefers to think of prophecy or destiny and flee his full life into same - deception, though he has evident signs of fact about his situation. There is something about the fact that the maxim “Know Yourself” was written on the temple of Apollon in Delphi, but the following is besides the slogan – “Nothing in excess” ...

Milla points out that neuroscience as the basis of 1 component of modern medicine is well aware of this mechanics of human action. It results in denial, confabulation, self-deception, games between cognition and ignorance. The communicative of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, who inhabit the same person, has, turns out, many incarnations.

Mill’s problem of avoiding same - cognition is besides illustrated by King David, Uriah the Hittite, and Bathsheba. Moreover, crucial in this context will be Confessions St. Augustine. It will besides be natural to callback Socrates' conversations with Cephalos or Trazyma with Countries Plato completed by the author of the book presented with a crucial conclusion:

We are the same as the Athenians. At 1 point, we all reject Socrates' invitation to know the truth. We voluntarily quit our effort to gain actual beliefs about the world, fearing that the truths about ourselves will be revealed during this process – especially our insufficient courage to examine ourselves. We like the illusion of self-reliance and accept our ignorance only due to the fact that it is ours. It doesn't substance that relying on false opinions is the worst kind of dependence. Nor does it substance that we can pay for our stubbornness by losing our chance at happiness. We'd alternatively go down with the ship than make our names scrape off its hull. Socrates says he doesn't realize why people would be mad at individual who wants to aid them. He's right: it doesn't make sense. However, all kid wants to fasten the zipper in his coat (Blissful ignorance...(p. 48)

The next question is taboo problem. He so recalls Mill's poem by Frederick Schiller Before the statue in Sais, which shows the destiny of the hero challenging Isis to defy his desire to know. There's inactive a chance to think about the consequences of the events that heroes are active in. Don Quixote Cervantesa. The story of Prometheus or the past of Wild duck Ibsen. And all of this as examples of submission to ignorance. This part of the book besides speaks of what the Bible teaches and the communicative of the Garden of Eden as a communicative of the Tree of cognition of Good and Evil, from which the first people are not allowed to reap fruit. There is talk of the Qur'an and in general of the origins of the birth of various religions and of the human curiosity of tabooing certain phenomena. Milla writes:

[B]The people we make are parental figures, they are to defend us, but they are besides to service as authorities that we can oppose, which allows us to quit our hard work to become our own authorities (Blissful ignorance..., p. 69).

Next part of the book treats void. Here again there will be references to the communicative of Oedipus, heroes Don Quixote, Socrates' thought or Iliadesbut besides to St. Paul and especially to his First Letter to the Corinthians and a variety of spiritual and political anti-intellectualism. An example will be innocent children in contrast to the claims of scholars. Milla said it was real. The beginning of Western populism.

Another part of the book exposes the problem innocence. It begins by analyzing Abraham’s sacrifice problems. This leads to comments on topics that have late been the subject of a peculiarly intense discussion. Milla writes:

Whether we like it or not, we are all heirs to the Christian view of the world. We may not believe that Jesus was the Messiah and that he sacrificed himself so that we might have everlasting life. We may not believe that sin permeates all fallen creatures. We may not view ourselves as immaculate lambs or as wicked snakes. Yet we inactive stay active – psychologically and culturally – in the unhealthy dynamics of the Christian perfect of innocence. This is most evident in our reasoning of the sexuality of children.
Sometimes we accept the Christian presumption that children are born naturally clean, and their souls are undefiled by desire. Hence, parents and teachers have 1 clear task: until children grow up, they must be kept ignorant about sex. Most societies usage any kind of censorship to hold learning about it until young people consider themselves prepared to deal with it – at least that's what happened to the spread of the Internet, which broke all the charitable curtains. [...] It seems that we have decided to keep everyone in perpetual suspension of puberty: on the 1 hand, we urge children to decision into this condition, although they are not prepared for it, on the another hand we let adults to stay there as long as they want. Peter Pan would be delighted (Blissful ignorance..., pp. 145-151).

The last chapters of this work concern nostalgia, so what used to be And what? Now. Modern discussions on the request to cultivate “conservative values” are besides well known. Here comes Odysseus from Iliades Homer and Eveas of Eneida Virgil. The consequence will be, among another things, that modern-day fascism adherents are – nothing little than – heirs Eneida.

At the end of these brief information about Mark Mill's work, it is worth recalling a fragment from the preceding 1 Notes to the Readers. The book states: “This book has an informal, exploratory character, and for this reason I did not burden it with extended technological references. It contains simple final footnotes that indicate the sources of the quoted passages, and sometimes suggestions for further reading." It's true. This book is not addressed to specialists and researchers of its issues, but to all who would like to spend any time reasoning about our defining engagement in this amazing paradox of the pursuit of cognition and its avoidance, and mostly to think about various forms of escaping or turning backwards from reality, which, by the way, Erich Fromm in the 1940s called "the escape from freedom".

Additional value Blessed ignorance Milla, on the another hand, is the relation of her author to literature. This book can be regarded as an excellent answer to 1 of the questions that concern education and are usually formulated at the end of these questions. Entries. The question is why and how to read the beautiful literature in school. Well, not to repeat the findings of researchers in the field of “knowledge of literature” or “theory of literature”, but to discover problems and secrets of human life in the literary texts, as Mark Mill does. So read to realize what concerns us and what characterizes us. In that case, it would be good to yet realize, by the way, that the schools served top-down and from the political giving of “canons of reading” not only service specified science, but, on the contrary, advance cultural warfare. This clearly illustrates, for example, the definition of the reading canon by prof. Michał Paweł Markowski:

Canon is – very effective – a tool of cultural manipulation, i.e. convincing about the value of this or another part of reality. Show me your canon, and I'll tell you who you are, which is what you truly mean. In this sense, the discussion about the canon does not make much sense, for nothing comes from it. The claim that canons are not eternal but historically conditioned is already so apparent that there is only an analysis of the motives for creating specified a canon, not another canon. Is life without canons possible? Of course not, but there is simply a immense number of canonization strategies: almost everyone and everyone has their own cultural canon, or sphere of intellectual, emotional and social security, in which life seems to make more sense than outside it. So I see canon as a average of communication alternatively than as a hierarchical structure of values, due to the fact that the same canon someway communicates people with each other, that is, it has an inclusive function. Thus, the canon is simply a tool of separation, as it excludes those with whom we are uncomfortable. The war on canons [...] is so a cultural war in the brightest edition (see M.P. Markowski, Interpretation. Texts collected 1988-2023, word / image / territories, Gdańsk 2023, p. 465).