ignorance is bliss

is it really?

taking eating as an example - i recall seeing the book "eating animals" in the bookstore - it is this green book with loud letters splashed across. i read how it turned natalie portman from a vegetarian to a vegan. i was not (and am not) even a full vegetarian yet.

i picked up the book, and put it back down. the book was scary. i had some inkling of what it would tell me - most people have some idea that they don't really want to find out where their food comes from (which is logically insane - this is very stuff we are made out of. but anyway). perhaps the author just made shit up to scare people to better sell his book. maybe he had been brainwashed by a treehugging cult and just trying to convert everyone.

i wasn't ready for it. when will i be ready? when i've had my share of juicy kobe beef and mouth-melting foie gras direct from france? when i've tasted all the good things in life and no longer have an urge to try them? when i have a kid and will actually care what he/she eats?

i have a general urge to get to the bottom of things, that much i know: though i haven't really thought of whether knowledge is inherently good. didn't adam and eve get kicked out from eden because they ate the apple from the tree of knowledge? so the biblical god doesn't approve of knowledge anyway? or, maybe there's a "healthy limit" of knowledge and we're supposed to only learn and know so much - and beyond that is not a good thing (and dead animals would fall in this "too much knowledge" category)?

perhaps... ignorance is bliss, an infant-like bliss, one that is so fleeting it is practically meaningless, since we weren't aware of it anyway. and perhaps great wisdom is true, long-lasting bliss? is that another meaning for 大智若愚?