What You Don't Know Can't Hurt You.

This week's writing assignment. There are so many levels to this prompt, 30 minutes felt too short.

We don’t know who fashioned the Olmec heads.  We haven’t ascertained with any certainty what happens when we die.  There’s no consensus on what lies beyond the speed of light.  Turning lead into gold has flummoxed alchemists since the first human ground chalk and mare’s milk into heartburn medicine.  When bees cross-pollinate tassels from popping corn with corn that has a sweet carbohydrate load, does that constitute a GMO?  Do angels watch over me when I’m driving? There are countless things we don’t really know and perhaps never will, yet we can still sleep peacefully at night.

                There are, at the same time, countless things we’re sure of:  I feel confident that if I stick a flat of sparking Black Cats in my mouth, I will be permanently disfigured.  Assuredly, if I angrily and sincerely tell my boss to go pound sand, I will no longer have a boss, or a job.  When force is applied in one direction, another force will be applied in the opposite direction.  London was wiped out by a fire in 1666, exactly 50 years after Shakespeare died.  Drinking an entire bottle of white-cake flavored vodka will make me quite happy for about an hour and quite sad for two days.  These are just a few things I know.  As long as I know these things, I can skirt their consequences by not doing them or I can recite them to fascinated audiences at parties.  The saying would inversely apply in such cases.

Come to think of it, taken literally, this saying is a bunch of hooey! Imagine that I didn’t know drinking a bottle of vodka would have those effects and I proceeded to drink three Dos Equis, one bottle of root beer schnapps and then a bottle of vodka alternated with orange juice, in that order, all in the space of an hour?  Then I would be on a boat in Dutch Harbor drowning in my own vomit. Or think for a moment on the consequences of believing sincerely that my boss would pound sand at my vitriolic recommendation – I would be slumped over my steering wheel weeping with a box of office necessities on the seat next to me.  Also, I’ve worked in the trauma intensive care unit – I don’t need imagination to visualize the results of firecrackers releasing their energy while surrounded by ignorant human flesh.  What you don't know can absolutely wreck you, forever.

So this must be one of those esoteric sayings that applies largely to idiots and fools, who, another esoteric saying says, God watches out for.  It must apply to the young, the drunk, the brave, the ditzy, the cuckold, the citizen or soldier who trusts his leaders implicitly.  I think I’ve sufficiently established the inherent hooey factor in such tired platitudes.  So does natural selection.

We chuckle “Ah, the innocence of youth” when we see how boldly and foolishly they dream, because we know they will only learn from experience, and experience brings pain, which directly contradicts this vacuous aphorism.

It runs through my mind that ignorance is bliss, but honestly, I don’t know.  Can that hurt me?