Ignorance and Bliss

[Mark Harris]

< in western (or occidental) literature, mythology,
and religious 
legends, 
 stories and doctrines---there is a characteristic and
persistent 
tendency to 
 associate a negative connotation or result with the
quest for higher 
initiation 
 and higher knowledge (and, altogether, with the
process of esoteric 
 initiation, esoteric knowledge, and esoteric
realization). in the 
traditional 
 western (or occidental) literatures, there is
characteristically a 
"penalty" 
 for those who approach the divine too closely, or who
even seek to 
realize 
 oneness with the divine. indeed, the tendency to
confine human 
existence and 
 human potential to the mundane, the material, the
physical, the 
social, and all 
 that is merely exoteric is the principal
characteristic of the western 
mind, 
 all of western culture, and all that characterizes
the western (or the 
 "westernizing") and the modern (or the "modernizing")
influence and 
tendency. >

Mark Lilla has written an essay on this topic
*exactly* called "Ignorance and Bliss" for the Summer
2001 Wilson Quarterly. Unfortunately the essay is not
up at the WQ website - they go online with contents
only selectively (and usually past shelf-date).
However, the magazine is worth picking up.

Mark 


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