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Originally Posted by beautyscientist  Can't quite see where you are going with this one. |
The problem is that few people understand the nature of frames and the force these frames have. When people do not comprehend they are unable to look behind the curtain. Another big problem is how to frame the issue to fit your value system.
Another good example of the power of good framing was the success of the conservatives in reframing the inheritance tax into a death tax.
I wish to make people aware of the meaning of self-actualization and to encourage them to achieve this human need by becomig self-learners.
People embedded within an ideology have a point of view that to them is universally true and is natural. They do not comprehend that they are using a linguistic frame. Take the pro-life church going individual. To that person the killing of a baby is not a frame but is reality. Likewise the pro-choice individual considers that the only rational way to look at the matter is from the choice view point. Ideologies are powerful because most of the individuals have the truth and the truth is whatever the truth of the ideology is.
I think that we must take "intellectual" off the pedestal and recognize that those we consider to be intellectuals today have failed us. They have sold out and have become hired-guns for the plutocracy. We must develop new intellectuals and we can do that when we recognize that adults can become self-actualizing self-learners and thus delelop them self into intellectuals.
What is meant by intellectual? I suspect you would get ten different answers from ten different people but I will tell you what it means to me.
Intellectual activity is exploring and enthusiastically utilizing this marvelous brain we were all given at birth. I suspect the normal adult brain is in neutral almost all of his or her life. When we finish schooling most people seem to consider their intellectual search for ‘truth’ is over. In fact most people do not even examine such an idea.
An intellectual life is a life in which the search for truth and meaning becomes an important hobby. The person with an intellectual life spends as much time trying to understand as s/he spends learning how to hit a golf ball properly.
All of us pass through a schooling system that is designed to fill our heads with the knowledge we need to get a good job. Our schooling prepares us to become strong and industrious workers and voracious consumers. We have been prepared to become maximizers of production and consumption.
An intellectual life is one we must create after schooling so that we can create our value system more in tune with what we are as intellectual beings than what we are as consumers.