By Joel Bowman, on January 13th, 2018% An English poet, Thomas Grey, ended his 1742 poem, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, with what has become a well-known aphorism: “where ignorance is bliss, / ‘Tis folly to be wise.” The part that’s quoted most often is, “Ignorance is bliss.” Considering ignorance bliss has a long history. One of the central stories of both Judaism and Christianity is Eve’s being tempted by Satan to eat the fruit of knowledge and then persuading Adam to do the same.
The theme has been important to me for a long time. The title of my 1974 Ph.D. dissertation . . . → Read More: Ignorance Is Bliss
By Joel Bowman, on January 1st, 2018% Last year, 2017, ended not with a bang, but a whimper. While how the current year, 2018, will end is still unknown, the world in general and the U.S. in particular, are not on a good trajectory. While some countries are doing reasonably well, most are not. Even in the States, the microcosm of individuals and places doing well, doesn’t change the macrocosm. I am not worried about the planet as a whole. Earth has survived mass extinctions in the past, and life has continued. The life forms, however, changed. It is as though the planet was saying, “Well that . . . → Read More: 2018 Ready or Not
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