Don't Google That!

Ever look something up on the internet, and then instantly regret doing so?

One reason for this sort of research remorse might be finding something disgusting to you. During my 3 decades online, I’ve seen more of these sorts of things than I can remember or hope to recount. I might have even relished sharing some of these things with other folks, just to get their reaction, or to share in a cringe.

Having to see something offensive to your sensibility is a good reason to avoid looking some things up, but it’s certainly not the only reason someone might want to avoid knowing something.

When Oedipus learns (spoiler!) that he’s killed his father and married his mother, he can no longer stand to see, so he blinds himself by gouging his own eyes out. Even worse, Oedipus knew about this prophecy when he was younger, and he ultimately made it come true by trying to avoid this very outcome.

Made It Come True

Centuries after Oedipus, there’s the curious case of Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, who ultimately realizes he has created a monster. Knowing this tears him apart, and he would have been far better off if he had never found out the answer to whether he could create life.

Macabre Mary

Then, there’s the story of Adam and Eve, and how certain types of information might be better left unknown. Even further, the implication is that knowledge can lead to suffering.

To that end, the literary world meets reality in Oppenheimer’s famous quote from the Bhagavad Gita:

Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.

Oppenheimer’s case is unusual, though: it’s not as though he didn’t want the Americans working on the atomic bomb to succeed. That’s not because he wanted to become the destroyer of worlds or anything like that, but instead because the Nazis were working on the very same bomb at the very same time. Nazis with nukes was a nonstarter.

Even still, now that everyone knew that it was possible to make such a bomb, the race was on and the knowledge was out of the bag, so to speak.

Perhaps a less jarring example of where ignorance is bliss is when you’re waiting to catch up on your favorite TV show (or movie, or book), and everyone’s talking about it online. You really, really want to avoid any spoilers. Don’t Google that show!

Likewise, you might not want to know about a surprise party that’s coming up for you, or you might not want to know how this illusion works:

Incidentally, I’m in the opposite camp here. I love that our brains essentially trick us into seeing a three dimensional, spinning image when there are just pixels moving from one place to another, and I’m generally not a fan of surprise parties.

Other people might not want to know how much debt they owe, or when certain bills are due. Maybe they want to protect their psyches in the short run, but this sort of self-destructive willful ignorance isn’t really the sort of thing you can truly bury your head in the sand over… at least not for very long.

You might not want to know whether you’ve got a terminal disease, and I can understand the peace of mind that lack of awareness might give them. I certainly wouldn’t judge someone who made that sort of decision, but I’m also very aware that most cancerfølken (as my friend

Rudy Fischmann

calls them) prefer to know. I suspect it’s the same for most terminal illnesses.

Ignorance is only truly bliss, then, in very specific arenas. Further, it’s up to you to decide what you don’t want to know. I think my own personal threshold is extremely tolerant of information, but I really don’t want to spoil any kind of media (movie, TV, book).

Sometimes I don’t want to know something about a person, like how romantically involved they were with someone or what sort of gross things they did together. The very useful abbreviation “TMI” almost always takes care of this, though. Apart from those cases, I tend to want to know.

What about you? Are there certain things you’d prefer not to know? Is one of them about poop?