Originally Posted by
MarathonTmatt
SoCo,
I am going to put the strong language aside. I would rather respect other people for who they are and any insight they can offer, but respect is a two-way street, it works both ways. I would like to give you some real-world examples of a few things here, to back up my perspectives and maybe you will understand the angle I am coming from a bit clearer.
My kindergarten teacher recommended me for "special education." My parents did not want to place me there and in first grade I was in a normal classroom. In second grade I was placed in special education, although when they tested me I was at a 9th grade reading level (in 2nd grade) and everything else was probably normal, except maybe math. I think this is because I did not have patience for it. So my placement in spec. ed. had nothing to do with my test scores and IQ, rather it had to do with my behavior. (My parents did not allow them to give me any drugs, even today at almost 30 years old I can still count on one hand the number of times I have had any pharmaceutical medicine, even a tylonel or an Advil. I do not go to the western doctor's office, never have before, never gotten a shot and wasn't born in a hospital either, but one of my Tai Chi teachers is a Chinese doctor.) I would day-dream in class. When my parents first met w/ the kindergarten teacher he was saying I must have a learning disability. Well, I was there and my mother said "tell Mr. Green what you have learned." And I started rolling off about everything I had been learning in the class to the T, and the teacher was so surprised. So the lesson here is I am not stupid, I am a different kind of a learner than other people are. So as you can see, this kindergarten teacher was wrong.
This same kindergarten teacher also recommended I get a pair of glasses. My vision is okay, but not the best. Today, I wear them maybe 50% of the time, but I can function just fine in regular situation without them, I would not be a good sharp-shooter without my glasses though. One of my eyes was normal, the other would wander. It wasn't being cross-eyed, there is another word for it. In the traditional Native American culture (and other traditional cultures in the world) this feature is actually considered to be a mark of beauty and wisdom. In fact, I remember when I was young my grandfather would look at my birth marks and tell me I was special because of my marks (yes I have Native American ancestry.) Now, there was an eye doctor who at one point in my youth reset my eye so I no longer have that particular mark of beauty.
Anyway, starting from when I was a teenager I would not wear my glasses so often and I would try to strengthen my eye-sight naturally. I would stand a certain distance from a tree for instance and try to count all of the leaves on the tree. The next several times I went to the eye doctor he would prescribe a weaker and weaker prescription for me. I mentioned the leaf counting off-handedly, but did not tell him that was what I was doing. He scoffed at the idea, saying that kind of thing does not work (although I knew this is how my eyesight had slightly improved.)
Now, the moral of these stories is that the majority can sometimes be wrong about something. Even in the field of established science. Remember how we were taught that people supposedly used to think that the Earth was flat? Or how about what science knew about the planets 100 years ago compared with today. Science is always changing, and people come to new understandings. One thing about scientists though is that they have to follow a strict doctrine which is sometimes counter-productive to better understandings of things. I do not have a source for this, so this may not actually be the case, but I heard somewhere that Darwin, in his later life, rejected his own theory of evolution. I will have to see (or maybe someone else) if that can be sourced/validated.
Whether you know it or not, when you resort to name-calling and say I am an idiot, then you are no better than those eye doctors or that kindergarten teacher. Grade school is nothing more than an intensive 12-step program to indoctrinate people at a young age, and then it continues when they go to university in their college years. You need to ask yourself if that kind of schooling is true knowledge, or the knowledge somebody else wants you to know/think a certain way. I am lucky in a way that I did not fall prey to their programs and can think clearly for myself--[Oh if you only could grasp the scale of the irony here...]. Even if I am not on mark about some theories/insights/data, sometimes I am in the ballpark, so to speak.
People these days worship the intellect. But that is a bad thing, actually. It is good to have an intellect, but it is only a tool, it is also good to have a heart and a soul. Instead of thinking with your mind, try to think more with your heart.
Have a good day.