Re: Suffering fools
Originally Posted by
keezoy
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I agree.
Knowledge is never foolish. Having it about anything is never foolish. It does not weigh anything. And in most cases it doesn't cost anything. All you have to do is stay awake, listen and observe. My main point here is that people sometimes develop a habit of seeing everybody who doesn't agree with them, behave like them, Do what they would do or of having different political, social or spiritual views as "fools" and "morons".
I have done reasonably well in life by adhering to the principle that I can learn something from everybody I meet. I believe people are good, bad, apathetic, power hungry, manipulative, altruistic blah blah blah. I believe some are saints and some are pure evil. But I think they are very seldom fools or morons. As far as IQ goes, most of us fall within one standard deviation from centre in the bell shaped curve.People with the view that everybody is stupid just indicate they have a closed mind and consequently miss out on a lot. JMO
Being able to criticise oneself however is entirely different. I
f I had a dollar for every time I've done things that I thought were foolish, I would be a very rich man.
Keezoy, I fully agree with you that there is something to be gained from everyone. However, while the endeavor of acquiring knowledge is never foolish, sometimes knowledge (as it is commonly considered as fact at the time)
is, as is using knowledge excessively for power or other self-serving motives.
We once gave people mercury to cure everything from diarrhea to syphillis because it was common knowledge that it had curative properties, and the Catholic Church didn't play nice with Galileo because, at the time, Ptolemy's geocentric model was widely accepted as the absolute knowledge (even though Aristarchus of Samos had developed a heliocentric model hundreds of years beforehand).
We might not know in the moment that knowledge is foolish, but it can certainly turn out to be the case. This is why treating knowledge as absolute can be just as foolish as ignorance can turn out to be. I wonder what knowledge we hold now that future generations will find foolish? What a good thing it is that we keep seeking!
I guarantee that when it comes to being foolish, I would be richer than you.