Don't ignore the basic human need for ignorance

I’ve been re-reading the writing of H.P. Lovecraft recently. For those of you not familiar with the name,  Howard Phillips Lovecraft is probably best known as a writer of horror fiction and for the creation of his Cthulhu mythos, something that has spun off into games, films and graphic novels. As Stephen King explained to American Heritage magazine, "Now that time has given us some perspective on his work, I think it is beyond doubt that H.P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale."

While ploughing my way through his often over-wrought prose, I stumbled across the opening paragraph in his Call of Cthulhu short story and it struck a chord.

For me it was a brilliant reminder of how important ignorance is to the human condition. It's a simple fact that we can’t possibly ever understand everything and often the more we understand, the more maddening life can become.

Rupert Price (DDB's Chief Strategy Officer) once explained his take on brand building to me. His take on it was that we were providing a service to the end consumers by freeing them from the tyranny of too much choice. By building brand recognition we allow them to shortcut their decision making process and sub-consciously filter out what to them is unrecognizable noise. That really resonates with me.

 Anyway, I just thought I’d share the paragraph. If nothing else, it’s a terrific piece of writing so I hope you enjoy it...

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.