Is ignorance bliss?

Stop. That’s right, stop. Curb your gut reaction and think for a moment.

I’m one of those people who would say it’s better to be informed for increased probability of making well made decisions in life. An ignorant person makes poor decisions that will come back to haunt due to lack of info, right? Then I thought of children…and a neighbor.

Generally, children are “ignorant” of the world, and yet they don’t worry or make foolish, life changing decisions. They get up, play, eat, go to school and do chores and then go to bed. They never worry about finances, family, society’s issues, natural disasters, foreign powers, or the possibility of an asteroid hitting the earth.

Then I think of a neighbor I knew when growing up. She was up in years and couldn’t tell ya what an mp3 or even a laptop was. She was oblivious to politics and the outside world. She lived self sufficiently on her own farm and died that way, as did the rest of her family. She was what you would call “ignorant” and yet she never seemed to suffer from that. Rather, she seemed to possess much more peace then the rest of the fast paced world. My pondering of her and children in general has led me to reconsider my opinion on ignorance.

So, what do you think? Is is better to be ignorant or informed? Which brings about more happiness in the long run? In symbolic terms, is it better to read the newspaper or not to?