Ignorance and Bliss

"Since we're billions of times more ignorant than knowledgeable, why not go with our long suit and have an ignorance-based worldview?"

- Wes Jackson in The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge

Did you know about the Google calculator? If you type in a math problem into Google, you'll get the answer above the several million search results. This doesn't sound very impressive, since your old Texas Instruments calculator did the same thing back in 1980. But if you Google "answer to life, the universe, and everything" the Google calculator will answer "42". Try it.

Douglas Adams fans will appreciate this playful little quirk in the great search engine, as the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything does, in fact, turn out to be 42 in Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.

Google's California headquarters is named the "Googleplex", a nod to the "Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard?" (again, see The Hithhiker's Guide to the Universe).

It's heartening to me that the folks at Google have a sense of humor. Because in the age of Google, it may be more important than ever to remember that the calculable answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything might just be something like 42. Put another way, we're increasingly amazed at how much we know and how accurate our knowledge is becoming. But we don't always stop to ask whether we can still find meaning in all that data.

Wes Jackson is a farmer and agricultural scientist. And the quote at the top of this page contrasts pretty sharply with googlization. It suggests that we might not be any closer to the truth about our selves and our world if we had a real Googleplex Star Thinker. And Jackson suggests that a respect for all we don't know is as crucial as the accumulation of information.

The book of Proverbs puts it this way:

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not rely on your own insight.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
Do not be wise in your own eyes;
fear the Lord, and turn away from evil."

That sounds like quaint, out of date wisdom from an age of inadequate information. Human insight has gotten us mighty close to the Googleplex that was science fiction humor a few decades ago.

But the stuff of tragedy is the same as it was in Homer's time and before. Hubris is ever the enemy. The prideful certainty that we can know enough is still our downfall. We are oh so wise in our own eyes, but are we happy? Are we whole? Can we still make a mess of things?

Trusting in God and acknowledging God are ways that we humans have embraced our ignorance. While we Christians believe that God has disclosed God's very self to us, God is not a problem to be solved by the Googleplex. God is a mystery that grows thicker, richer, deeper with every encounter. And, ironically, it's only in our acknowledgment of the realm and the One we know almost nothing of, that what we do know takes on meaning.

Without the reclamation of an ignorance-based world view we may never learn to use the information we've Googled well.