I have divided this article into two parts
- Why I don’t want to develop intellectually alone anymore
- Why I want to develop intellectually with others
You can read each one before and come back to this one or you could finish this background article and then read them after. 🙂
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If you like to think (some hints to self-identify: you spend time explaining to yourself how the world works; you’re that guy in the class or at work who always asks great questions; you’re just curious about things in general; you want to capture in your brain as much information as possible), then you’re an intellect.
Being an intellect is not special nor an excuse to look down upon others. Most people have to think to live and survive whether they like it or not. The important point here is like it or not, thinking is mandatory.
But the intellectual person doesn’t just think because it is not optional, instead, he/she rejoices in it, and in some extreme cases lives for it.
INITIAL DEVELOPMENT
Since the variables of our birth, location, and the people we meet differ, every person’s intellectual journey is unique.
I believe our motivations and the intellectual direction we pick depend so much on the experiences we go through while growing up as a child and then as a young adult.
While in college, where I got the opportunity to meet people from various continents, I learned that the puzzle of life we solve is so random yet we are able to reach similar conclusions.
I found this puzzling at first. But then I slowly found out that when we use reason and follow the same trail of thought then more often than not we are bound to find ourselves with the same conclusions.
The first step in realizing our full potential as thinking persons is to reflect on our individual experiences and understand that our further intellectual development will be built on top of those experiences and will not be a brand-new start.
CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT
The adage “learning is a life-long virtue” is still true to this day. Everyone no matter what has been their intellectual career can enhance it for the future.
But this cannot be done passively or randomly i.e. hoping living life as usual or consuming x, y or z videos/audios/books will do the job. Because growth requires consistent improvement over something. So we as thinkers don’t want to believe in our beliefs just because we have already been quite convinced, but rather that our further sophistication in a) understanding of the world and b) sharper ability to reason, should provide newer reasons to believe in the things we already believe in. And also to update/replace our beliefs when and where they’re no longer tenable.
The big question then is … how?
How does one ensure continuous intellectual self-development?
Currently, I do not have the perfect answer. But I hope that this blog will be a starting point in finding answers that will help everybody. So that everyone can take their intellectual growth into their own hands.
