Ignorance is Not Bliss : Sneak Peek
I woke up from the dream giddy with eyes stained pink.
It happened in 2017 while lying in a hotel bed in what shoulda-coulda-woulda been paradise—an all-inclusive trip to an island off the Great Barrier Reef for a materials science research conference. Ah, the majesty—twenty years old, getting paid to sit on pristine beaches, absorb lush greenery, and marvel at the unique wildlife—and yet there I was, completely miserable. Worse than miserable, actually. Hopeless. Devoid of future. For context, my (then) girlfriend and I had just gotten in yet another long-distance phone fight, it was dawning just how little I cared about my future in science and engineering, and meanwhile, back home—fourteen hours behind and a universe away—everyone on Instagram was apparently living their best, unblemished lives.
Cue the waterworks and pink, puffy eyes—sobbing made uncontrollable by cycling thoughts of guilt: “you shouldn’t be upset; other people are starving, you know; you should be grateful you’re here; wah, cry me a river little baby Ethan…”
Hours of this falling deeper, deeper into the well of self-pity until…
Until…
Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!
A hysterical cackle broke the intoxicating spell. Interpreting the noise as a monkey call I leapt from the bed, giddy like the curious little boy I’d forgotten I was, shocked—no, delighted—that monkeys also inhabited this magical little island!*
The thrill of this mind lasted all of two seconds before turning back on itself, at once addressing its own inconsistency: “Wait—weren't you sobbing just moments ago, and now you’re tickled by the thought of monkeys?”
The absurdity moved through me like a crack through glass. How could I pivot from despair to childlike wonder so completely, in an instant? Who’s talking up there, anyways? The questions lingered, and in the space they created, something broke. Not violently—closer to ice giving way under warm water. The relentless voice that had been narrating my misery, judging my every thought, catastrophizing my future—it just...stopped.
Silence. Total, radiant silence.
A collective spiritual awakening is once again underfoot, only this time, unlike the one that burgeoned in the 1970s, I believe it’s here to stay—multiply, even.
The statistics confirm my hunch perhaps better than anecdotes can: The global wellness industry is now valued at $5.6 trillion and growing at 5-10% annually. Over 300 million people worldwide practice yoga—up from just 20 million in 2000. Mindfulness and meditation programs have been adopted by over 50% of Fortune 500 companies, and 24% of Americans say they've practiced Buddhist meditation before. Psychedelic therapy, once relegated to counterculture, is now mainstream—featured on podcasts like Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss, with FDA approval for MDMA and psilocybin therapies on the horizon. Meanwhile, the mental health crisis is anything but improving: the WHO reports that depression affects over 280 million people globally, anxiety disorders another 301 million, with rates spiking particularly among Gen Z and Millennials. And perhaps most surprisingly, after decades of decline, Christianity is experiencing a resurgence among young adults—driven not by institutional religion, I assume, but by seekers hungry for meaning, mysticism, and direct experience of the divine.
And yet, we’re still tripping over the same spiritual potholes that derailed seekers on their quest for ‘enlightenment’, ‘moksha’ or ‘salvation’ back in the last spiritual bloom: dogma, naivete, forcing, delusion, ignorance. As such there is an opportunity—an opening in the market, as they say—for a particular kind of book, one that threads many needles at once. This special book would need to be a lot of things: rational without making science its wheelchair, compassionate without being permissible, mystical without being unapproachable, religious without being preachy, and true without claiming certainty.
In short, we need a spiritual book with concrete answers that make sense to both our hearts and our heads.
Ignorance is not Bliss is my proposal to satisfy all of these needs. It is a book written for seekers, skeptics and stragglers navigating (okay, fine…holding on for dear life during) their spiritual awakening. It explains why we suffer, how to not, and what life will look like when all of us humans stop. It synthesizes Buddhist wisdom, yogic practice, and Christian prophecy into a framework for discernment, commitment, and spiritual transformation.
The proposed book is at once relevant to those undergoing an unexpected spiritual upheaval—meaninglessness in the face of loss, loneliness despite constant digital interaction, and hopelessness due to the unnamably-felt, slow-approaching, civilization-scaled armageddon heading our way—and those already on the Path, the spiritual warriors who have been purifying for years and need specifics on what’s happening, why it’s happening, and when the hell it’ll end.
If anyone is positioned to write such a book, I am. I came of age during the algorithm era—Facebook launched when I was twelve. I then spent ten years embedded in mainstream American culture: popular high school kid, attended a large state school fraternity, an engineering degree, corporate project management. I then spent the next eight years undoing all my ‘progress’: silent meditation retreats, yoga trainings, going raw vegan, making sense of my kundalini awakening, and solo traveling the world embedded in communities ranging from Buddhist monasteries to Web3 collectives to New Age communes. I’ve written blogs and essays about culture and awakening for six of those years. I’ve lived in many worlds, and have sat silent, watching what spiritually confuses, disregards or leads people astray. Some get numbed by achievement and ‘the grind.’ Others are seduced by spiritual materialism, or by the fantasy that ‘hard work’ is no longer necessary. And many more miss the point of human incarnation entirely, convinced that the incoming utopia is more of a biohacker’s paradise than a return to the Garden of Eden.
As far as I can tell, all are mere symptoms of ignorance, meaning all are easily rectifiable given the appropriate knowledge and reframing.
Part 1 of Ignorance is not Bliss attempts to make clear the philosophy of suffering—why it happens, how it happens, and who it actually happens to. It addresses the fact that modernity is fueling our unhappiness and trapping us into an anxious cycle, a cycle that is becoming increasingly difficult to escape from. It is largely based on Buddhist wisdom.
Part 2 tries to detail how one gets free from this cycle. It teaches the fundamentals of physical, mental, and spiritual purification by which the chain reaction of discontentment slows and eventually stops. It draws moreso on the structure and language of yogic thought and practice.
And Part 3 does its best to describe what life is like beyond the purification process, atop the mountain in the city of Bliss. How does one view themselves at this elevation? How does one view others? What might the planet look like once our species abides there? It leans more on Christian terminology and doctrine.
Intuiting that such an approach might seem like cherry-picking—creating a Frankenstein monster of spiritual ideas, as it were—I'd remind readers that, unfortunately, the opposite pattern has dominated history. The Buddha's teaching fractured into Theravada and Mahayana, which gave rise to Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, Pure Land, and countless others. The yogic tradition fragmented into the schools of Hatha, Kriya, Kundalini, and Bhakti, to name a few. Similarly, Jesus's teachings schismed into Orthodox and Catholic, then Protestant, which further prismed into thousands of denominations—Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Pentecostal, and on and on. God forbid a book try to unify religious teachings, rather than divide them.
In fact, the way I see it, different traditions are not competing answers to the same questions. They are answers to subtly different questions and layers that arise on the path of the devoted truth-seeker. By analogy, imagine three doctors examining the same patient: one orders bloodwork, another requests an MRI, and the third evaluates psychological history. One would not say that this is “cherry-picking medical opinions”—rather, it’s trying to understand the multidimensionality of the problem within the patient. Rare is it to find a single diagnostic tool that captures the whole picture. Better together, I think, that they might reveal what’s actually going on in there.
That such a vastly-scoped, and hopefully timeless book can be created is my Moonshot, one that I have been working on for the better part of six years (indeed, if I’m allowed to be honest here, lifetimes). I am very grateful that you are considering taking on this project. I truly cannot imagine a better publishing partner to bring this dream into reality.
Ethan Hill ॐ
January 29th, 2026
*To my inner child’s utter disappointment, I later learned that this cackle was actually the impressive call of a Kookaburra bird, and not a monkey.