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I definitely identify as an intellectual. I spend a lot of time reading books, especially the classics and older philosophy texts, and I definitely identify wit
by saberience 8y ago
I definitely identify as an intellectual. I spend a lot of time reading books, especially the classics and older philosophy texts, and I definitely identify with this article and the general premise.
For me personally, the hard thing is reading the thoughts of Plato, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, etc. and then trying to understand how we had such amazing thinkers 2000 years ago and that we don't seem to have moved any further at all in the year 2018. Yes, of course science and technology have progressed, but our human behaviors have not improved. In fact, we seem to have regressed and now have Donald Trump as President and Theresa May in the UK, trying to pull the country out of Europe due to rampant xenophobia.
Anti-intellectualism, anti-science, anti-vaxx, climate change denial, rampant capitalism at the expense of our souls. It seems like the default goal of the Westerner is to get rich enough so that they can narcotize themselves against all the pain and fear of the future which is underlying our society.
Southern California, where I live, is a place where your instagram "image" seems more important than whether you're actually a good person. People spend more of their time glued to their screens scrolling on Insta or Facebook seeing other people's portrayed lives and obsessing over their likes and follows. Working long days so you can afford the next step up on the car ladder or housing ladder, so you can get some temporary satisfaction before that fades and you start the ladder again.
I think if Socrates or Plato or Aristotle were to time travel to this future, Socrates would be sharing his hemlock with them before they committed group suicide.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoIt’s not isolated to Westerners, we simply started a little earlier so are further along.
- 50656E6973 8y agoCarl Sagan, MLK, Einstein and others all talked about how our technological progress has outpaced our moral/human progress. There are plenty of more recent examples of such brilliant minds but you'll be hard pressed to find them if you're attention is fixated on shallow toxic dinsinformation platforms like cable news (CNN, Fox) and social media (FB, Twitter) which promote hatred and division over love and community
- sp332 8y agoTry Heidegger's Being and Time. It's a super tough read (I read portions of it for a class) but it's motivated by the same frustrations you mention.
- JackFr 8y ago>For me personally, the hard thing is reading the thoughts of Plato, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, etc. and then trying to understand how we had such amazing thinkers 2000 years ago and that we don't seem to have moved any further at all in the year 2018. Seems like pretty good evidence that people are deeply flawed, sinful creatures.
- zanny 8y agoPeople are blank slates forged by the society around them. Nobody is inherently evil, not even a socio or psychopath. People are made evil, ignorant, anti-intellectual in the ways they come to interpret and interact with the world. Its more evidence that the collective societies we have built aren't anything worth revering yet, at least not the ones "on top" of global culture today.
- YaxelPerez 8y agoSocrates and Plato were outliers among Greek society and spent a lot of time criticizing it. It wouldn't be surprising to them that most people suck.