Calling on Sacrates & Aristotle

Lets get philosophical for a moment....Man, my college Human Situation teacher would be shocked to hear those words come from me. But I digress. I was just thinking about phrases and sayings that people use, and one in particular hit a cord with me and made the wheels start turning, as they say. The phrase in question is: ignorance is bliss or what you don't know can't hurt you. We've all heard it and, I'm sure, used it, but have we ever analyzed it? Normally I'd answer that with, "Umm, hell no I haven't analyzed it! Why would I do that?" And because most people would agree, I will unravel the expression for you. Ignorance can be bliss only if you don't know that what you don't know would help you if you knew it. (I know, so reread the sentence and try again) Example. Say you have a trig test, and once you get started you realize that you don't know the formula to answer the questions. Are you happy? No. You're gonna fail. So in that case, ignorance (you not knowing the formula) was not bliss, and the reason is wasn't bliss is because you knew that what you didn't know (the formula) would have helped you should you have known it. Now lets say that your having a good self esteem day, hair's looking good, outfit is smockin', but what you don't know is that there is an awkward stain on the back of your pants. Maybe you sat in mud or on someone's gum. Regardless of what it is or how it got there, you are ignorant to its existence, so your upbeat self confidence is unaffected, you're happy...but only because you don't know that stain is there and you don't know that you don't know that. Should you discover the stain later on, then we're back to ignorance not being bliss because the knowledge of the stain would shatter your self esteem, and you would replay you're whole day trying to think of the people that saw it--not blissful.

There are all kinds of expressions that, if you stop to think about what you just said, are kind of crazy. Take 'eat shit and grin' for example. Really? Could one ever eat shit and then grin about it? I know I couldn't. Did someone hawk a big loogie one day and then say, "Damn! That looks just like my sister's dog," and hence we have 'spittin' image.' Or how about 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush'? What the hell does that even mean? I just think it's funny how we've grown up with these kinds of sayings and never think about what they mean or how they even got started. Know what? After everything I hear I'm going to start saying, "well, piss on a log and the snake eats the rabbit," and see if it catches on : ) I have no idea what it means, but meaning doesn't matter.

Well, that was my attempt at being philosophical. It only proves that I am in PR for a reason and why I'm not following the footsteps of Sacrates.