quijybo

"Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific research was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were the sovereign goods. Right up to the Nine Years' War. THAT made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping around you? That was when science first began to be controlled-- after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for."-- Aldous Huxley "Brave New World"

life for me is a constant struggle between ideas that i have come to find mutually exclusive.
how does one choose between knowledge/beauty/truth vs. happiness/lack of worry/blissful ignorance?
i wish someone could prove to me that the cliche "ignorance is bliss" is untrue, because i find it to be cyclical and omnipresent in my life.
the very things i love and value, often seem to juxtapose themselves in stubborn opposition to my own happiness.
can one be too self-aware? is that neuroticism? do i ignore things and live the happy uncultured life?
beauty is pain.
the truth hurts.
happiness is a fluffy purring kitty on your lap
err.. something like that...