Intellectual laziness, stubborn ignorance, and the false self.

[Tobin S.]

Last edited Thu Apr 19, 2018, 01:29 PM - Edit history (1)

I think most people in America stop growing and learning intellectually after they get out of school. For a majority of Americans that means when they are 18. They might get a little wiser over the years if they learn from life experience, but when it comes to the exploration of ideas, they just shut down after high school. They might work hard jobs that require physical labor, but their interior lives are marked by intellectual laziness and an abhorrence for new ideas that might cast some light over the ignorance that prevails. If you want to learn you have to be open to being taught. Many people are just too stubborn for that. They hang on to their ignorance and erroneous ways of thinking to their graves.

It's very sad when you see this kind of thing in the people that you love.

My nature is to try to understand the world and the people in it. If I don't understand something, I learn about it. It just seems foolish to me to live in the world essentially cut off from everyone else. But that's what it's like in this country now. Most people are so closed off from each other that they are even closed off to themselves. This isolation of the psyche leads people to believe that they are something that they are not. Their true selves languish in obscurity and rarely see the light of day. And when the self does surface people are so surprised by it that that they don't think it's real. I firmly believe that our true beings reside in compassion and love. There is no room for hate and selfishness in the self. But most people are essentially selfish. Then what are they? They are a false construct that they have mistaken to be their true beings. Trump is the epitome of that. He is not real. He is not true to his being, and that state of mind is a product of America.

[DetlefK]

1. The true meaning of "Horror is other people." is different from what you think.

The original meaning of this sentence is that meeting other people is horror because we are forced to see us through their eyes. Meeting other people forces us to give up the image we have made of ourselves for ourselves.

Ignorance is a way of preemptively denouncing criticism.

[Tobin S.]

4. I don't think horror is other people.

I think true liberation lies in connection with other people, but we are far from that.

[TheMastersNemesis]

2. We Live In An Intellectual Vacuums. Lack Of Curiosity Is Pervasive.

I play a lot of golf and am always looking for ways I could improve. I have had a swing fault for years that I Keep trying to fix. I am surprised by golfers and even golfers I know that have little curiosity about how swings work and how many style of swings there are. I am also surprise at how many people I play with keep trying to get better making the same mistakes they are already making. Or how incurious they are about what they might do about how they play.

Of course I see a lack of curiosity in many levels and not just something like golf. I see little interest in exploring anything new. And politically I see ignorance and stubbornness on a scale I could have never imagined. I see people losing benefits voting for politicians who DIRECTLY saying to them I am going to take away YOUR benefit.

So go figure.

[True Blue American]

3. I think

You are describing,” Brain dead Republicans,” in your post.

As for me, I prefer to keep learning for the rest of my life.

Quit learning, you might as well be dead.

[get the red out]

5. Keeps me going

Without learning and experiencing new things I don't think I would still be alive with my depression. I too have had to frequently search hard to find answers to the root of issues that affect my emotions, and I have found a lot of joy in being willing to learn entirely new things, like getting a dog and learning to do dog agility with her, which has also led me to meat a lot of cool people and be much less isolated.