Introduction: Blissful Ignorement

“All you need is love?”

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Just a quick question before we get started: What do you see here?

If you see the word “love” – as might be expected – what sorts of feelings or memories does that term stir up in your mind? How sure are you that those memories are real? How convinced are you that those particular letters even spell out “love”? Are you absolutely positive? Would you say that you “know” that it says love? Using just the twenty-six ABCs of the Roman/Latin alphabet, could those letters possibly say anything else other than love?

Well what if I told you that when I look at that little snippet, I see a mischievous boy named Max. What if I told you that this set of letters has nothing at all to do with love and merely represents Max’s name? Is there any reasonable way I could be reading that right? Or can you imagine a plausible way that we could both somehow be right?

I wholeheartedly believe that it says “Max”; at this point, in fact, I would go so far as to say I “know” that it says Max. In my eyes and in my mind, it is a provable fact, and I don’t believe there is anything that could convince me otherwise. Perhaps you feel the same way about your belief that it says “love”. Well, I’m going to ask you to be open-minded enough to consider my interpretation; and if I ask that of you, I have to expect the same of myself. In other words, I’ll likewise try to be open-minded enough to accept the possibility that I have somehow missed the mark about Max.

Genuinely accepting the validity of an alternative view is a very hard thing to do in the face of absolute conviction. If you aren’t convinced of my interpretation, I believe I have additional information that might change your mind – if you are willing to consider it. Once I pass that along, perhaps you can shed additional light on my interpretation as well; I promise to re-consider my conviction in light of your insights, and maybe then we can try to reach a mutual understanding of the truth. I have been wrong before about things I thought I knew, so I have to accept that I might be wrong about this one as well.

In the meantime, to you it says love, to me it says Max, and until new light is cast on the subject, we will find ourselves at an impasse. If you refuse to examine any additional information in this regard, and if I refuse to consider your perspective, we will never see eye to eye. I will be stuck with my viewpoint and you will be stuck with yours. Too many families, nations, cultures and institutions have been divided and destroyed by that stubbornness – let’s not do that!

Now that I’ve called the meaning of the word into question and have expressed my conviction of a differing interpretation, maybe you’re no longer 100% sure that it says love. But what if I hadn’t expressed my own view? What if the only source of your own information came from those who believed it said love? Now I could be wrong, but in the case of the image above, I really don’t think any unsolicited doubts would have spontaneously appeared on their own.

Taking it further, what if – on top of having only a single source of information about the meaning of the snippet in question – you had been told that the mere consideration of other viewpoints came with hidden dangers that could destroy your soul? In that case you might actually fear the exploration of the slightest doubt and find comfort in the meaning that you’ve accepted, shunning further investigation and perhaps professing, “I know it says love” until the day you die without ever having considered an alternative perspective.

I can certainly understand why someone would think – or even claim to know – that it says love, so by no means does my own alternative view invalidate the sincerity of anyone making that claim. Everyone has the right to their own belief and interpretation, and I respect that view as genuine; but here’s the problem:

A lack of doubt is not knowledge; sometimes it’s just plain ignorance.

And if you’ll allow the paraphrase:

Ignorance never was happiness.

Those remarks might sound awfully pretentious, as if I’ve somehow deluded myself into a denial of my own ignorance, but in this case I’m not using the term ignorance as in stupidity, but rather as the “nounification” of the action verb – or should I say the in-action verb – to ignore. Maybe I should be calling it ignorement instead, because it merely implies that some piece of the story – whether deliberately or accidentally – has been ignored. And if that which has previously been ignored is genuinely considered, I for one, believe that what once was knowledge can turn out to be surprisingly malleable.

So where do we start? Could I change my opinion simply because the people I love most in this world professed their profound knowledge that this set of glyphs spells out love, pulling every card from the unanimous fibres of their being to absent shadows of doubt in trying to convince me? What if they desperately needed me to believe that it says love and cried tears at night for anyone with a differing belief?

What if those closest to me pasted reprints of this snippet all around their houses and sang only songs that contained the word love – Love is all you need, Love is the seventh wave, and so on. What if they recited love lyrics over and over again every day at dusk and dawn? What if they told me that all of the overwhelming feelings that are stirred up inside of me at the thought of the term “love” prove conclusively that those letters do, in fact, spell love?

What if they believed that my soul could only be saved if I could make myself believe that it says love…and that I would suffer endless torment unless I could pass a lie detector test to prove my genuine belief in that viewpoint? What if someone tortured me on a rack and begged me to profess that belief?

Well maybe I’d give in and say it…but could I really pass that test and whole-heartedly convince myself of an alternative truth? At least in my case, I don’t think any amount of pressure could bring about a real change in conviction – unless, that is, my eyes could be opened to another possibility by the provision of additional information.

One thing we all need to accept about human nature, though, is that even if someone receives evidence that runs counter to their original belief, there are no guarantees of an accompanying change in mindset or stance on a given issue; some beliefs are fervently held without consideration of any information at all, because divine confirmation or successful indoctrination has already trumped any existing or future evidence that might be considered to be contradictory. To those who are convinced of the correctness of their own views “because God said so,” the existence of contrary information becomes entirely irrelevant to the discussion.

If you believe that God told you that the word in the image above says love, for example, no information I present is going to matter in the least; I’m not going to change God’s mind, after all! If an equivalent manner of conviction would be a prerequisite for swaying your mind, and if you don’t accept the slightest possibility that your eyes could be opened to another interpretation, then there’s really no point in reading or discussing any further; I’d invite you to stop right here as we part ways at this impassable impasse.

As for those who wish to continue for now under the assumed absence of supernatural endorsement of this particular image’s meaning, perhaps we have the possibility of genuine openness to another angle. If you’re the least bit curious about another viewpoint and choose to read on, we might just end up agreeing about Max by the time we’re done – or perhaps not; in any case, I hope we can share an interesting journey sorting it out! In the end, it is of course your choice…and here’s mine:

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