Couldn't have said it better myself.*
Sunday, July 11, 2010 at 9:45AM Back to the subject of intellectual laziness, which I do believe is the plague of society. Here is an excellent post by a gentleman named Will Wilkinson. He writes about "Ignorance and Ideology."
I've been trying to think of a nutshell (let's go with Brazil this time, because I don't think a peanut will get us there) version of my internal struggle over the matter. I think this is it:
At some point in our lives, we establish our essential belief system. It may come from our parents--either we adopt the same system or we swing 180 degrees away from it; it's still their influence. It may come from our friends or any number of other sources.
However we choose, it feels really good to believe in something and to identify with it. We find others who share our beliefs, and then we feel validated. These "others" might be friends, colleagues or..."professional" ideologues. And here is where the trouble arises.
Once we identify someone on the national stage who supports our views, I believe the majority of us stop thinking for ourselves. That is the moment. It's time-consuming to study all the different sides of an issue, after all, and so when we find a publicly-acknowledged individual who is willing to do it for us, we heave a tremendous sigh of relief and hand it all over.
We have to stop doing that. It's dangerous. When we abdicate our very thought process in favor of someone who is all too willing to take it up, we are severing our last tie with individuality, with freedom of thought, with whatever it is that makes us...us.
* Although I will keep trying, of course.
Reader Comments (2)
As usual I totally agree with you... uh, I mean, I better think about it some more
I think we have to do a good deal of this kind of delegation just to get by in the world. It becomes a matter of trust. I do my homework to identify those people who I can trust to act (or think) responsibly on my behalf and then let them do it. An important thing to add, however, is that I still have ultimate responsibility for my actions and beliefs, even if my 'contractors' screw it up.