Is ignorance bliss?

I think that when Roberto Knox says that as people grow up, their "faculty of wonder seems to diminish" he means that we stop questioning the world because we have become so used to it. As humans, we are so caught up in our monotonous lifestyle that we don’t stop to ask questions to understand the most important things.

When something is new, the mystery and excitement of it is so apparent that it makes you wonder, but when you see it everyday, you get used to it, so you feel that there is nothing amazing about it anymore. The drive that children have to understand and learn is lost as we grow older because we take what we have for granted. A child can appreciate something because they haven’t seen anything like it before, and therefore are overwhelmed with questions about how it works, and why it is here. As we’ve come to accept the world as it is, we can’t full appreciate its beauty and its mystery.

This is illustrated to us in the novel through the dialouge between Sophie and her mother. Whenever Sophie mentions ideas about the world, her mother rejects them, and in one case asks if she has been taking drugs. This shows us how for a child, trying to understand the world seems completely natural, but for adults just accepting that the world is here is the natural response.

Also, I think that out faculty of wonder diminishes as we grow older because we do not want an answer to the things that we cannot understand. Many people believe that ignorance is bliss and it’s easier to just not ask, then to try and understand the complexities of the universe. After all, asking questions would just show us how much we do not know.