>>Do you ever disagree with the 'best minds'?<<
Well, of course. Plato and Socrates defended slavery, as I remember, still they gave us democracy as well.
And Socrates was so committed to his philosophy of the social contract he accepted an unjust death sentence rather than break it; and Plato in the allegory of the cave understood the illusions we all labor under.
But the best and the brightest of our species is all their is to learn from. And many people believe we deduce knowledge. We do not, we learn.
Sartre drove me nuts, but there were few smarter, so one reads them and gets ideas and goes on.
I thought Hemingway was an asshole, Steineck shallow, Salinger nuts and Twain a coward, but all had important things to say. Learning is like democracy, not very clean or organized, but all there is.
So, still it beats ignorance by a long shot. I was very ignorant until I was 20 years old, so I remember how I saw the world back then.
In a million years no one could have ever explained zen or exstentialism to me at 20. In fact I didn't even know what society meant. I thought it meant high society.
When I entered college my cup was very empty and so as I was very poor I majored in business. Once I learned enough to see how ignorant I was I changed my major to experimental psychology and minor to philosophy. |
