Confidence is defined as, “belief in oneself and one's powers or abilities; self-confidence; self-reliance; assurance” (Dictionary.com). Ignorance is difined by Dictionary.com as, “the state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, learning, information.” Confidence and ignorance do not seem like two words that should go together. However, this quote suggests otherwise, "All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure" (Twain).
When a person is ignorant, he has a lack of knowledge, this means that he has to capacity to learn. I see ignorance every day, in my peers, my parents, and even myself. In my life I try to use my ignorance to drive me. Knowing your ignorance can give you a boost when it comes to
learning and education. When a person is confident, it radiates off of him. Sometimes faking confidence makes the confidence surface. If you are confident about learning and succeeding then you will succeed. I live by this every day. I try to go into every situation acting like I am confident and ready to conquer life. This mindset helps me keep a positive mind and work hard. These two ideas do not go together; however, in some ways they do. You must be confident that your ignorance will propel you forward. This society exposes us to a media that is constantly commenting against us. These deprecating comments cause people to believe the deceptions. As humans, we all have flaws, but how we deal with those flaws is the real judge of our character. Everyone needs to become ignorant to these kinds of comments. Becoming ignorant to these detrimental comments will boost anyone’s confidence and lead you to success. Success has varied meanings depending on the person. To me, success is being right with God, loving my family and having an amazing group of friends. I agree with Twain in the fact that you need confidence and ignorance to lead a successful life.
Knowledge helps people make conclusions, lets them be skillful, smart, and keeps them aware. People gather knowledge through experience, whether it's from school, mistakes, witnessing a situation, or trying new activities out. Including in “Fahrenheit 451”, the author, Ray Bradbury does an amazing job in explaining and describing to his audience of how society results in a setting without reasonable amounts of knowledge. People in the society of “Fahrenheit 451” begin to lose common sense after the books are prohibited to keep. In the novel 451 Ray Bradbury warns the audience that without knowledge people are manipulated easily. In reality knowledge is the key to surviving.
Our knowledge is a key to our success and happiness in our life to give us personal satisfaction. Knowledge is power but not always. Sometimes our self-awareness and growth as an individual gives us negative thoughts that make us want to go back to undo it. Everyone wants to unlearn a part in our life that brought us pain and problems. Good or bad experiences brought by true wisdom can be used for our self-acceptance, self-fulfillment and these experiences would make us stronger as we walk to the road of our so called “life”, but Douglas’s and my experience about knowledge confirmed his belief that “Knowledge is a curse”. Both of us felt frustrated and sad from learning knowledge.
Throughout the history of mankind there have been numerous cases in which people were victims of oppression or hate. Among these cases the sole reasoning behind this oppression or hate being based on the perception of others. History has shown that society is responsible for labeling groups of people, generally these labels are misleading.
So to say, knowledge can either make or break a person. It can act as a benefit, for power, or loss, for ignorance. “Do not take for granted what you know. Ask yourself how you know what you know; ask yourself whom it benefits, whom it hurts and why.” (Blackboard: Knowledge is Power)
In general, when people are learning, they achieve a state of understanding by learning something they consider they do not know. However, this common-sense contains a very irrational factor, that is, if a person have no idea about something exists, then for this person, that kind of things does not exist, hence the person will not emerges a desire to acquire that kind of things, then this person cannot behave like discovering or learning. If a person emerges a desire for something, that person must already know it sometime in the past in some way. Only in this way, it will make sense.
Ignorance is bliss as one who is ignorant does not fully understand all the issues occurring around him or her and is therefore somewhat innocent to them. In “Revelation”, by Flannery O’Conner, the main character Mrs. Turpin is ignorant of the fact she is the same as everyone else, but she has different classifications of people of which she is of the higher category. O’Connor uses “Revelation” as a tool to represent people who are both ignorant and not ignorant and what it almost takes for some people to fully overcome ignorance.
In today’s society, a lot of what we are exposed to in the media contains bias, resulting in not entirely accurate information. We can choose what we want to believe ignoring certain facts, which could affect the way we live regarding health and happiness. Ignorance is not “bliss”, but can have a negative impact on our health if we choose to ignore what is happening in the world around us. No matter how much you try to silence your surroundings, your culture, what you identify with, and your habits, will all speak for themself. Silence is the loudest of them all.
Not only does ignorance have a negative impact on people, it is also “the root and stem of all evil” (Plato), which can destroy a person. To start off, self-superiority can cloud a person’s judgment; making it evident that intelligence can easily be lost to arrogance. To add on, anger and the human tendency to make rash decisions can also contribute to ignorance, resulting in eventual downfall. Lastly, unconscious attempts to blind yourself from the truth can result in the committing of major sins. Tragedy occurs in “Oedipus the King” when ignorance causes disastrous events, proving that lack of knowledge can result in their misfortune.
Often, valuable knowledge is learned when you find the truth. In Allegory of the cave by Plato the escaped prisoner came out of the cave with just shadows to see the real world. This was obviously a big deal to find out the truth about his entire life being essentially a lie and pretty hard to accept but, we can presume that the outside world was a whole lot more beautiful than inside a cave with just shadows as your world. One thing that comes from finding out the truth is that you have more of a freedom to make your own choices. When you are in the ignorant world you just go through the motions and follow what you have been taught your whole life but when you accept the truth you are able to make your own decisions and educate
Most people are comfortable in their ignorance. According to the short story “The Allegory of the Cave” by Plato, the willingness to enlighten comes from the things you learn and come to understand regardless the oppressive circumstances. When people are taught the way of one lifestyle they become conservative just to lose appreciation they could have for a new journey…. Everyone becomes scared of trying something new in their lives but forget that chance is okay and vital in moving forward in our everyday lifestyles. The only thing that is holding you back, is you.
In the article Which is worse, ignorance or apathy?, it told the story of two friends who went on a trip. They came across a bridge one had researched the bridge and knew it was unstable and the other had no clue it was unsafe. They both cross the bridge, the knowledgeable one pushing the information aside, and plummet to their death. One died of apathy, while the other died of ignorance. The one with the knowledge of the danger could have prevented both of their deaths, but he didn’t think. People don’t think and they cause the downfall of themselves and people
But when we consider ignorance along with agnosticism which is a mode of the intellective process, there is an obvious contradiction. Because ignorance is not just mere lack of a knowing, conversely, every ignorance is always a process of being ignorant of something quite precise. In other words, one who ignores knows in a particular form what it is that he ignores. For example, a person who has no knowledge on economics is not ignorant of what a Cobb-Douglas equation is, because he lacks information to such equations. Only the man who is told about Cobb-Douglas equations, and does not know what we are talking about because he does not understand the meaning of the words, only then is this man ignorant of what a Cobb-Douglas equation is.
After a person is aware of their ignorance, they can seek knowledge by learning from others and discovering for themselves. Living a life where someone is constantly examining themselves is important because if they do not examine themselves, then they will not have knowledge about the things they do not know about themselves. Learning from others is a passive way of getting to know something because you are not trying to go out and experience it yourself and learn through experiences. Learning from others is crucial early on in a humans’ life. As humans grow up, they should start seeking more knowledge for themselves as opposed to learning from others because seeking knowledge for ourselves can help to get to the deeper truth about themselves or something else. In school, students often are learning from others instead of gaining knowledge themselves. When students start to discover knowledge themselves, they are trying to get to the truth and are interested in gaining knowledge about the
Confucius believed that knowing oneself is the most important thing when concerning the apprehension of more knowledge. There is difference between knowing that something is not within comprehension and pretending that something is while actually believing that they actually comprehend it. There is primary ignorance is when an individual knows that they are ignorant to a certain thing. Then there is secondary ignorance, which is when an individual is so ignorant that they are not aware of their ignorance. This is the reason why knowing oneself is a vital part of having knowledge, if one is ignorant without knowing the knowledge received would not be of the higher level that humans are entitled to.
Naiveté is ignorance due to a lack of formal education. It would appear that the term naiveté would apply as well to one who was taught, albeit insufficiently. The majority of the human world is naïve and abandoned, causing them to remain that way, whether through inability to access a form of formal education or through the inabilities of the teachers attempting to teach them. It would appear that the lack of education is a major problem in the world.