A truly great mind is a mind that can hold an idea, examining it, without adopting that idea. I first became aware of that fact while I was still in school. Most people have examples. Except for me, everybody’s favorite book was the book being read in English class. How many people around you, if you really look, believe that they believe something more than they actually believe it?

My niece was by a few days ago. We let her play an older video game and she did something that I had not seen before. She actually tried to make friends with one of the video game sprites. It was one of the sprites designed and programmed only to stop the hero from reaching his goal, but she didn’t understand that. The idea was strange.

There was no chance of changing the mind of this sprite. It exists only to block the hero. Any contact with this sprite causes the hero to leave the screen. This was not the result of any misunderstanding between the hero sprite and the villain sprite. No feelings were involved. Nothing was going to alter the relationship between the two sprites.

Yet, my niece did not understand. She kept trying. The fact that she kept failing came as a surprise to her. My niece is still very young, so that is just one of those cute stories of childhood.

How many adults are there who keep doing the same thing? One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Am I the only person out here who feels like he is starving, intellectually, in this culture? You will not talk evil out of its nature.

Not fighting back did not save the Amish girls in their school. They did not believe that it would. Evil will not be contained by talk. While you are being reasonable, Satan is being smart. He know that you will meet him halfway time and time again. Since his position does not change, each step carries us closer to Satan’s goal and away from our own.

Bad ideas have been written down many times in every language with a written form. You cannot turn your back on them. These ideas must be faced and understood. But, to do that, you have to be able to examine the ideas without becoming their property. Discourse must be driven by reasoning.

It is possible that any idea is a good idea. Asking the question is always good. There is just no value to asking the question if there is no way to examine the idea. How can you get an answer like that?

Is there a reason why modern societies do not teach their children logic? There have always been things that can only be memorized. To write otherwise would be lying. In each generation, a society has a set of basic assumptions upon which everything is built and the civilization will collapse if these are removed. Theories can be falsified, however, they are never really proven.

What are we protecting by maintaining ignorance? Are we protecting ourselves because we believe that we believe more than we actually believe? What if the people who think themselves the wisest, because they hold onto the big ideas that they have read about, are the dumbest people in all of creation?

Maybe it is a good time to finish being a stand-up philosopher for today.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 20th, 2006 at 12:01 am and is filed under Mulligan Adventures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.