Wisdom as a lethal reflex
Wisdom is the (incredibly effective) reflex of perceiving, thinking and acting from knowledge. By "knowledge," I mean principles and facts that you know are 100% true.
This is not easy, because we live in society, and the only constant in society is deception. (Notice that in contrast, the only constant in nature is truth, which is why people like to go to nature (woods, lake, mountains, etc.) to connect once more to the source and escape from the sea of deception that is society.)
So what happens when a person lives in society is that eventually, her intellectual self-defense system breaks down under the relentless attacks of so many advertising messages (even the evening news is filled with propaganda seeking to influence the mind of the citizenry).
In today's society, it seems so many people have abandoned their faculty of reason. They fantasize rather than think; they wish rather than plan; they justify their inaction and apathy rather than get to work and execute in order to achieve results.
This is why it's not so hard to get rich: the majority of people are not doing anything to lift themselves out of economic poverty. So once you start using your brain, you suddenly differentiate yourself from others, and begin to create value that others can't even imagine is possible.
They have been culturally conditioned to be intellectually lazy. Sure, the charitable thing to do is to help them, but only if they want to be helped. The best way to help them, in fact, is to become an example of a thinking person who uses her brainpower to reach practical conclusions and make sound economic decisions.
This is not easy, because we live in society, and the only constant in society is deception. (Notice that in contrast, the only constant in nature is truth, which is why people like to go to nature (woods, lake, mountains, etc.) to connect once more to the source and escape from the sea of deception that is society.)
So what happens when a person lives in society is that eventually, her intellectual self-defense system breaks down under the relentless attacks of so many advertising messages (even the evening news is filled with propaganda seeking to influence the mind of the citizenry).
In today's society, it seems so many people have abandoned their faculty of reason. They fantasize rather than think; they wish rather than plan; they justify their inaction and apathy rather than get to work and execute in order to achieve results.
This is why it's not so hard to get rich: the majority of people are not doing anything to lift themselves out of economic poverty. So once you start using your brain, you suddenly differentiate yourself from others, and begin to create value that others can't even imagine is possible.
They have been culturally conditioned to be intellectually lazy. Sure, the charitable thing to do is to help them, but only if they want to be helped. The best way to help them, in fact, is to become an example of a thinking person who uses her brainpower to reach practical conclusions and make sound economic decisions.
posted by Super Peter at 10:02 PM
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