The Tree of Ignorance

Imagine if you will a state of nature in which human beings, like other animals, have only beliefs and desires (and habits and instincts) and sensations, but no values or obligations or prohibitions or even permissions, to guide their behavior and constitute their feelings. Then one fine ill-omened day they come upon the Tree, of which they eat. And suddenly they sense a different kind of impulses and inhibitions, albeit very inchoately, having no definite content, though beginning to encompass the Tree itself. And then on a dark and ill-omened day they behold a man come down from a high mountain, tablets in hand, who tells them: “You ought not to do this. And you must do that. And you may do the other.” And now they find themselves responsive to these commands and directives. Whereas before they had not been, which is why they had not heeded the commandment not to eat of the Tree, for at that time they simply desired to eat the juicy pomegranates, and so they did so, feeling no compunction beforehand, but the beginnings of compunction thereafter. 

            Questions: Were they better off now? Were they closer to the truth now? Did they have a more comprehensive grasp of reality now? Or had they instead become deluded and loaded down with more suffering than when they merely desired things? In a word, had they eaten of a tree of knowledge, or instead of a tree of ignorance, that is, of false belief? Perhaps that was a good reason not to eat of the Tree, despite the luscious taste of its fruit. Had they simply been told this and that the consequences would be dire, their own desires could have prevented their eating the fruit. But instead they were told it was wrong to eat the fruit. This had made scant impression on them because it had no meaning for them. It had meaning only once they ate the fruit; but then it was too late.

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