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Originally Posted by KeithHandy Let me give a more concrete example: recently (I don't have the link offhand) someone posted a video to YouTube of a Rube Goldberg setup they had constructed in their office. I thought it was neat/clever, but when I looked through the comments I saw things like "u must have been really bored". I get the impression that a lot of people see creativity itself as nothing but transmogrified boredom. And there's a certain "deadness" in people's eyes when they say things like that. |
I'm impressed that you can see deadness in the eyes of YouTube comments!
Just because feats of mechanical engineering fascinated the YouTube poster and not some of the commenters you can't assume they're less creative! People have different interests and value systems. "Wow, you must have a lot of spare time" could easily translate to something like "If I had that much spare time I'd be out dancing/working on a software program/playing my guitar/preparing speeches for Toastmasters rather than wasting my time fooling around with widgets". People express creativity in different ways ; and don't necessarily recognise other peoples' expression of it!
I think all this talk of 'types' of people and 'levels of awareness' is misleading (and a bit dangerous!).
Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) once made an observation that stuck with me: there's so much to know in this world that
even the most brilliant of us is vastly more ignorant than we are knowledgable. Pretty much every single person around us knows something that we are ignorant of ; ie. can teach us something.
The levels of consciousness Steve posted are useful as a rough guide but (as Steve pointed out) people are at different levels in different aspects of their lives and at different times. In practice we're all at different levels in different aspects of our lives. You could probably say, "my level of consciousness
in general is higher than yours" but that's a trap. By generalising you fail to notice that the other person has (eg.) more courage or acceptance than you in certain areas (say, personal relations or public speaking) and could teach you a thing or two!
Circumstances matter too. If you walk up to a stranger on the street and start babbling about subjective reality and 30-day trials they're almost certain to look at you in a clueless manner. They're on their way home, trying to figure what to make the kids for dinner and they're exhausted.
OTOH, if you catch them at a better time and take the time to ensure common understanding of the ideas you may find a lot more interest and get responses like "So subjective reality is a lot like a Reality Tunnel then?".