Is Ignorance Bliss?

Shin Dong-Hyuk was born in a North Korean prison camp. He was the product of “forced reproduction” between two prisoners that were allotted time to sleep together for good behavior. He later snitched on his mother and brother’s escape plan, and was forced to watch them die. Forced to eat rats on a daily basis, Shin escaped because he longed for food, but not for freedom. Indeed, he thought things were ok because he did not know of any better; only after defecting to South Korea at the age of 23 did he become acquainted with the “real world” and everything it offered. Is it better to not know about that which you cannot have?

I didn’t know very much growing up. I went to a public high school that was described as “ghetto” by visiting private school kids; the statistical majority attended community college if any, wrote their own attendance slips, hid under desks during shootings, and learned how to freak dance before they hit puberty. We just didn’t give a fuck. After matriculating at a selective liberal arts college and spending some time in New York, I realized I was surrounded by the Fulbright-worshipping, case study memorizing, discounted cash flow regurgitating, wannabe yuppie scene that refused to live anywhere other than Manhattan. The funny thing is that the people I knew in that scene were not any happier than my high school buddies because they knew more about what they didn’t have. My friends from high school have not heard of McKinsey and don’t know the difference between investment banking and any other type of finance. Most probably never will. Therefore, they aren’t stressed about not working there, and are happier for it. On a certain level, I envy their ignorance.

A friend went into bulge bracket investment banking post-college, then onto a top MBA, and is now unable to find a job. Sound familiar? It took a while, but he has come to terms with the fact that he is no longer in contention for the “structured path”, and must instead resort to “low status startup jobs” that don’t really play off his finance background. Ironically, he’s actually happier being unemployed than he was being employed because of the people he’s surrounded by. The moment he started hanging around people that didn’t value prestige, the appeal of prestige vanished. The vast majority of senior people that I have spoken to in finance– everyone from hedge fund managers to PE principals that I’ve worked for– tell me that once you hit a certain age prestige matters less, and cash flow matters more. Why does it take so long for people to make this realization, and why can’t it happen earlier? Many soon-to-graduate college students I speak to lament the fact that they “just didn’t know about banking or consulting until it was too late”. Yet if you don’t have the social background to develop a “prestigious career”, it logically follows that you would be better off never having known about it in the first place.

In the movie, “The Matrix”, the protagonist Neo is offered a choice that will affect the rest of his life. Take the blue pill, and go back to the Matrix and blissful ignorance. Take the Red Pill, learn the truth, and bear the consequences. In this case, the Blue Pill means going back to the idyllic world where every job was a blessing, where just going to college was impressive, and just being able to make a living was respectable. The Red Pill means “knowing more about the world”, but having correspondingly higher, almost insatiable expectations. Which would you have taken?