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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 24, No. 13. 1961.
Staff v. Students... Debate
Staff v. Students... Debate
Ignorance and Bliss
"I have no arguments, so I prefer to define the motion" was Mr. Hogg's opening gambit in the annual Staff-Student debate on the topic "Ignorance is the only excuse for bliss." Hogg referred pityingly to the Staffs learned misery. "They drink at the fountain of knowledge—we drink elsewhere." However, after ten minutes of crowd-pleasing Hogg got round to putting up an argument and almost sewed up the debate for the Affirmative by pointing out that if bliss required an excuse it was morally culpable, and that ignorance was the only excuse for doing something morally culpable.
Replying for the Negative, Dr Sloane stressed that he was an Irishman, and hence, like the politicians, did not regard ignorance as an excuse for not opening his mouth. "Fellow geniuses, ignorance is a skill acquired with the years" declaimed the good Doctor, and proceeded to tell some Sex stories to prove that ignorance was not the only excuse for bliss. In fact, he asserted, Bliss needed no excuse at all.
Mr. Prassad attempted to introduce a serious note to the debate by stressing the Poverty, Hunger, and Vice apparent in the world, and asserted that only ignorance could excuse the blissful un-awareness people had of these things. However, Mr. Prassad weakened his moral stand by attempting to spice up his speech with juicy quotations from "Truth".
Counter-attacking for the Negative, Professor Joan Stevens quoted some of the more esoteric parts of the Oxford Dictionary and some of the more frank parts of Chaucer. Warming to her subject Prof. Stevens asserted that as tar as excuses for Bliss went the Affirmative also had drink.
Interjection: Mr Hogg did.
Miss Boyle, closing the Affirmative's case, bemoaned the effect of Education in destroying her chances of Bliss, and asserted that ignorance was essential for bliss. "Look how worn and pale all the Freshers arc in October," cried Miss Boyle.
Voice: "That's because it's Springtime."
Dr Truscoe now entered the fray for the Negative, and swayed the Audience to his side with an admirable display of cynical logic. "Bliss is a Chemical state arriving through a complex balance of different hormones," Truscoe claimed. "It is likely to occur via starvation, as in the case of the Saints, or through enjoying the suffering of others." However, it was unlikely to be attained fully in this world.
floor speakers, and Mr Bromby seized the chance to ride his hobby horse over the suppression of Student newspapers and Social Credit. Ignorance in politics was the only excuse for bliss, he asserted.
Mr Lewis then took the floor to disclaim. "I know Dr Sloane is ignorant," he said, "I am one of his pupils." As for Sex he claimed to know nothing : about it, but still to find it blissful.
Miss Frost said that the motion depended on the definition of bliss, and that in her view the necessary element, of bliss was an absence of conflict, and hence that it could only be found in Heaven or amongst the ignorant,
Mr Simeona said that in order to experience bliss it was necessary to be aware of it, and hence by definition this knowledge could not be ignorance.
Salient is Expensive Toilet Paper
Mr Roberts now took the floor to bewail the day he had first arrived at University to have his ignorance dispelled, and expressed disbelief in the, University motto that wisdom was to be desired more than gold. In a burst of self pity Roberts let drop the secrets that women were like chimpanzees, lawyers satchels contained only weekend grog, and "Salient" was the most, expensive toilet paper in the country. I "Only suckers learn for any other i reason than making money," he cried.
Mr McConnie claimed, as a higher animal, that he got bliss from listening to a Concerto and not from ignorance, I while friend Mr Flude stressed the pure bliss arising from knowing that your horse had won the race.
Mr Tamasese charged the staff with manufacturing new frontiers of ignorance in order to provide themselves with jobs, and noted that Dr Truscoe's arguments were like England—all wet.
Mr Mitchell extolled the joys of sex and Alcohol, while Mr Butler let flow that if one did not know what one did not know, one did not know what one missed.
Mr Hamlin thundered that none of the arguments put forward were valid since they dealt only with single facets of the topic.
"Ignorance is the only excuse for the idiot in the back row," opined Hamlin when heckled.
Mr Preston put forward that since i bliss was a personal feeling no single I reason could be advanced for it, while Mr Middleton suggested that ecstasy required almost complete ignorance. The final floor speaker, Mr Hart, claimed that the purpose of living was to improve oneself and the common good, and that this was bliss through knowledge, not ignorance.
Summing up for the Negative, Dr j Sloane parodied the main arguments of his opponents. Notably Economics lecturer Sloane rejected Prassad's "rguments" on the grounds that they were Economic and hence nonsense. "I got my Doctorate through transferring corpses from one cemetery of leaning to another," admitted the Doctor.
Indecent Poetry?
Hogg, closing the case for the [unclear: Affirmative], denied ever looking at a dictionary. "I invented my own [unclear: defections]," he alleged, and accused Dr Truscoe of gaining his bliss (ignorantly) from indecent poetry.
The debate closed with the motion being lost 12 to 37 on the vote of the whole house, and 15 to 29 on the Student vote. Miss Ford was the adjudicator.
—Reporter