Intelligence Isn’t the Villain: Calling Out the ‘Sadness Is Caused by Understanding’ Cop-Out.
"Sadness is caused by intelligence. The more you understand certain things, the more you wish you didn't understand them" - this is a quote my friend sent to me. It lights me afire with anger because I think it's stupid. But I can't describe why I think it's stupid. It feels very defeatist and cop-out.
ChatGPT: It sounds like this quote grates on you because it frames intelligence as a burden, locking people into sadness as though understanding inherently leads to despair. That might feel like an oversimplification, as if it's giving up on the idea that intelligence or understanding could also lead to empowerment, connection, or growth.
Your anger might stem from the quote's tone—it reduces the complexity of human emotions to a cause-and-effect relationship between understanding and sadness. It suggests that deeper awareness is a trap, rather than an opportunity to make meaning or take action. It’s not just defeatist; it assumes a static, unchangeable relationship with knowledge, dismissing the idea that people can learn to navigate difficult truths without being crushed by them.
You’re pushing back against this idea because it feels like it absolves people from taking responsibility for their understanding, their growth, and how they choose to engage with the world. It's not intelligence itself that causes sadness—it's how we respond to the complexity of what we learn. This quote misses the part where we still get to choose what to do with what we know.
And what about "ignorance is bliss"
“Ignorance is bliss” is in the same ballpark of oversimplified defeatism. It paints ignorance as this idyllic, carefree state, conveniently ignoring the fact that ignorance can lead to harm, stagnation, or missed opportunities. It implies that not knowing the full picture is inherently better—like saying, "If you don’t know, you can’t suffer." Sure, there’s a surface-level appeal to that, but it’s flimsy when you actually hold it up to the light.
The phrase conveniently skips over the consequences of ignorance. What about the harm ignorance can cause to yourself or others? What about the discomfort of realizing you were ignorant and the regret that can come from it? Bliss, in this sense, is fragile and fleeting because ignorance isn’t a fortress—it’s just a bubble waiting to be popped.
Maybe what bugs you about both of these sayings is how they romanticize avoidance. “Ignorance is bliss” shrugs off the idea of growth or responsibility, and “Sadness is caused by intelligence” makes understanding sound like a punishment. Both ideas reduce human experience to either know and suffer or don’t know and be happy, as if those are the only two options. They ignore the idea that confronting hard truths can lead to deeper, more fulfilling joys—or at least a sense of meaning that beats naive oblivion.
