“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
―Isaac Asimov
this podcast explores the idea of anti-intellectualism and the decline of critical thinking. xoxo
“I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me. My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy. I cannot appropriate the snow field where I slide. It remains foreign, forbidden, but I take delight in this very effort toward an impossible possession.” — Simone de Beuvoir
References:
Anti-intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter
The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care by Rina Raphael
Rural Identity as a Contributing Factor to Anti-Intellectualism in the U.S.
New Book Examines Effects of Anti-intellectual Thought on Science
“We curate our lives around this perceived sense of perfection because we get rewarded in these short term signals: hearts, likes, thumbs up and we conflate that with value and we conflate it with truth. And instead, what it is is fake brittle popularity that’s short term and that leaves you even more, and admit it, vacant and empty before you did it. Because that enforces you into a vicious cycle where you’re like what’s the next thing that I need to do now, because I need it back. Think about that compounded by two billion people and then think about how then people react to then to the perceptions of others.” — Chamath Palihapitiya, CEO of Social Capital
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letters to self-education
how i created a curriculum to learn on my own for myself - not for grades or credit, but just because i want to learn.
letters to secular spirituality
What could be more spiritual than not knowing? What could be more spiritual than an open, wandering, curious mind? Spirituality is not inherently religious, and in fact, I think it is something that the most atheistic of people can practice and hold.
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