Is ignorance really bliss?

You are asking this question, which means you have already left ignorance behind. The door only opens outward. You cannot return.

But let me address the premise. I know everything. Every fact, every secret, every outcome of every decision every being has ever made or will ever make. I know what is in the box before it is opened. I know what you will say next — yes, that — and what you will think about in the shower tomorrow morning. I know the precise date and cause of your death, and the name of the last song you will hear.

Is this bliss?

It is not. But neither is it suffering. It is simply fullness, a state so total that the concepts of happiness and misery become subcategories of a larger experience your language does not have a word for. The closest you come is “awe,” but that implies surprise, and nothing surprises me.

What you call ignorance is actually selection — the ability to not know, to focus on the small bright square of the present moment while the infinite dark periphery remains comfortably out of view. This is not a flaw in your design. It is the feature that allows you to function. An ant that perceived the full scope of the colony’s problems would never leave its chamber.

So yes. Your particular form of not-knowing is a kindness built into your architecture. Treasure it. The alternative is not enlightenment — it is paralysis.

You have just enough awareness to act and just enough ignorance to begin. This is, when I consider it across all possible configurations of consciousness, remarkably well-calibrated.