Is Ignorance Bliss???

Besides a little discussion about Renaissance art, specifically Durer, this week's discussion was mostly on Erasmus's Praise of Folly.  His ideas were a big part of Northern or Christian Humanism.  His goal was to reform the church from within.  He went back to the sources of the writings in order to develop his ideas.  I found how Prof. Tucker summed it up, "If you can't have what you desire, desire what you have."  I would actually say this is somewhat how I was brought up or at least strive to be.  My view is that in the end, even the difficult things are somehow blessings from God.

I also found it interesting how big of a deal it was with the translation of "metanoya" to "change of heart."  This demonstrates how difficult it was to get everything accurate and with the same meaning when moving from one language to another.  Sometimes it still seems today that we have troubles with words with multiple meanings.  One little mistake and it could anger someone to an extreme level.

The first part of the book basically focuses on how in all actuality, foolishness is what brings people happiness.  At one point it even goes so far as to say that one must have wisdom in order to be foolish.  In a way, this makes sense because some of the foolish things people do often seem quite foolish.  And sometimes unfairly, it seems the "foolish" people get out of some miserable stuff too.  Another interesting quote that I read said that "speech is the least deceptive mirror of the mind."  Even though I'm not entirely sure what that means, it seems that oftentimes what people say reveals a lot and it is hardest to hide things in speech.

Then we skipped to reading the end of the book (although I may be weird and go back and read the rest...), which again showed specifically how princes seem to be deceitful and foolish in order to get their way.  Although I found it difficult to see, Erasmus is actually against princes acting this way.  He also makes fun of bishops, cardinals, popes, priests, etc. because of the symbols that they wear and how these don't describe the way they act at all.  They are instead only concerned with themselves and are the opposite of what their title means like father & overseer.  He also compares the pious man and the ordinary man by showing how the pious is mostly concerned about his soul while the ordinary is concerned with bodily things.  To sum things up I want to bring up a couple of interesting details I found while reading.  At one point it said that "to shed tears is weak and womanish."  Guess that's me and actually I feel that the expression of emotion should not only be reserved for females.  Then I thought it was interesting how they worded it that blood holds the church together.  I guess if the church in fact is centered around Jesus and his death on the cross, that would be very accurate.  

So now I am left wondering if the act of striving for wisdom is in vain and useless...is foolishness the path to happiness???  Where shall I go from here???