Monday, September 9, 2019

Best You Can Be

My entire life since I was a child has been dedicated to intellectualism, which I came to realize at some point, had become a dirty word for some reason with some people.

Perhaps because too many people associated with it were complete asses about it. Think Donald Trump, only truly smart and a jerk about it and condescending. Yeah, I could see people hating the educated then. Also associating them with abusive power and money. But in my view, the "educated" aren't intellectuals by nature. Some are some aren't. It's like beliving an ivy league education means you're smart, or a good person. I've met some very stupid "well educated", even ivy league types.

Yet all it is truly is the about same as those who work out at the gym to stay physically in shape, who body build, who find beauty in the human form. And yes, many of them are shallow asses too.

I was working out not just my body, but my brain, my mind. That doesn't mean I knew everything, or that I was the fastest at thinking or whatever. It meant that for me, I tried to make my mind and brain as functional as I could make it in the face of reality and facing reality, and working out issues to their most correct end. We're not seeing a lot of that today because the other side is to do anything to "win" or achieve your goal. Which is corrupt.

I worked hard to have an open my mind, to make it more than it was. To always strive to learn new things, to stretch my comprehension of reality, and the universe. To be pliable in situations that were hard to fathom and out of my experience. Where I might lock up in a situation normally, and through previous effort, wouldn't.

And yet, I've still been in situations where I certainly did lock up. Because I'm human. 

This was never about others or a comparison to others. It never had anything to do with looking down upon others or raising myself above anyone. Or in my being better than anyone or in comparing myself to others.

My Sensei in Karate as a kid told us to compare ourselves against ourselves, not one another. Because we are all different and we may never be as good as some other. And we don't need to be judging ourselves against each other. But against our own best efforts. And not to be judging others. Where one excels in one thing, they may fail in another where you excel. How is that or should that be a judgment call against them, or you, then? 

What I discovered over time, however, was that others took that concept of intellectualism and applied to it what our Sensei told us not to do...to compare others to us. Or that others thought we, or I, was doing exactly that...looking down on them. When all it meant to me really, was that I was trying to be the best I could be, for my benefit and that of any others who could make use of me.

Having grown up from birth with ADHD and having trouble thinking as other did, all I could do was try to fit in, or try to excel to the point that I could appear normal and in that effort, I found I could excel in some, even many things. All the while feeling substandard even in the face of others seeing me as having excelled over others in a group.

That is part of ADHD for many because of always being, or having to be restrained, or shut down, held back. Not going far enough when expected, or going too far and having issues in deciding when what should be. I'm unsure if that is more frustrating for the child or the parents. Having raised such a child now myself, I can see it from both sides and I think it's harder on the child.

But many parents, as in my ex-wife. saw it as being an undue burden on the parent, or at least on her. The damage to a fully grown, mature adult, cannot be as difficult as a maturing mind striving and struggling to become...whatever it is they are supposed to become when frequently they need to "become" who THEY will be and not what is expected of them to be. A form to fill, when perhaps they cannot fill it.

Facts, knowledge, information, all verified, vetted, and peer-reviewed, scientifically proven, all collected as a professional activity, a hobby, and a passion with no intent on using that as a weapon, other than against ignorance and all that is wrong, is to me, intellectualism. Also as in sharpening a knife, sharpening one's mind. That is all it is. And I cannot fathom others who take that as an affront tot heir lack of those efforts in themselves, or in their lack of education, or logical abilities and capabilities. Another's inabilities should not be my responsibility or my fault.

I really and truly don't have a damned clue what has been going on in the world today or how those who are so very anti to all that I found admirable and laudable, came to be in power.

The only thing that seems to explain it falls under the realm of greed and criminal activity. Breaking rules to advance themselves. Skipping steps, push-button mentalities, not doing things right when you see wrong ways to achieve your goals with no consideration for either the future or any others. Or the damage it does to yourself, others, or society at large. Those behaviors set us up for failures in the future as processes and systems have been put in motion incorrectly. By all of us being as informed and correct, and adept at logical and creative solutions, sets us and others, and future generations up to succeed.

It's not all about me, now, at any or all costs. Life is bigger than us. Yet we seem to be creating s society where that has no bearing on reality or ourselves. As long as we win, succeed, or achieve wealth no matter the costs to our environment, our country, fellow citizens or other ways of thinking...within reasonable and humane considerations.

And we have now allowed a GOP and this President in Donald Trump to be in power wishing only to support ignorance and disinformation in order to attain and maintain their power. And at any and all costs...mostly to us. To America. To humanity. And to our Humanity.

They have taken the ball from the old Soviet's KGB and are now running with it.

But to what goal? To what end?

And so much of all this came from that initial hatred or intellectualism. As the Chinese did during their Great Leap Forward where they set their country back by fifty years in slaughtering and imprisoning their intellectuals, their doctors, their professors, their engineers and anyone educated or adept enough to see reality as it is, and not as Mao presented it.

It is apparently an infection humankind may always be susceptible to and one we have got to protect ourselves again, now and always.

And all you have to do is, be the best you can be. Not the most powerful, not the wealthiest, but the best person you can be. Support others doing that. Stop being negative. Try to be positive but in the most positive and production ways for yourself... and for all others.

That is not socialism or communism.

It's just humanity. 

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