Friday, December 08, 2006

The Awakening of Intelligence

Unfortunately many people still think that the expression of their intelligence, is the suppression, dominance and negation of everybody else’s intelligence, rather than that the greatest manifestation of intelligence, is the awareness of all the other intelligence one begins with, and in that realization, magnifies and “appreciates” it to unprecedented and unique effectiveness by customization to their own needs and preferences.

That is the fulfillment of possibilities in living in today’s world of unprecedented choices that already outstrip most people’s ability to keep up with them. That gap is compounded by the heavy promotional efforts to make bad choices -- to prefer the most ineffective but most costly option, over the most cost-effective but most beneficial to the end-user.

In many transactions of the primitive sort, the objective is to receive the most compensation from offering the least in return -- with the ideal being to receive something for nothing, and so every transaction and human relationship, has this flavor of lose-lose, and the sense that the more one does, the more one falls behind. Such participants are proud to point out how much more they are doing with decreasing productivity and satisfaction -- by valuing the cost in and of itself, as the indicator of what they are “getting.” So they know the cost of everything -- and beyond that, there seems to be very little satisfaction and fulfillment in their lives -- which of course, is to miss the whole point.

In a parallel universe, there are people who seem to have this immense joy and well-being that is not the struggle and competition against every other intelligence in the universe -- and one wishes they would teach that manner of being in preference to the present model of endless competition of each against every other student -- as though that was a manifestation of intelligence -- rather than its denial, suppression, oppression and coercion that retards human potential and possibilities.

“The world” is the interaction of the individual and their environment, which is also the “other,” and when one realizes that, recognizes that it is not necessary to change the other, to change the world -- because it is the interaction of one intelligence with every other, and so any change, including and especially oneself, which is everyone’s greatest power, changes everything. One notices this in unfortunate misunderstandings all the time -- how two brutish responses quickly escalate into tragedy that could have been nullified with an intelligent response -- which many times, will require none but the awareness of what is happening.

Awareness without the knee-jerk (conditioned) response, is the awakening of all intelligence in breaking the chain of expectations that create the momentum for subsequent unthinking behavior, which is the continuation of the past -- so that nothing new is possible. When this momentum slows or is non-existent, then all things are equally possible -- including and especially, the solution that ends the problem, instead of continuing the great chain of suffering -- as though nothing else is possible, or even thinkable. That is the great work of intelligence.

1 Comments:

At December 08, 2006 10:29 AM, Blogger Mike Hu said...

This process of coming to one’s own conclusions, is much more important than regurgitating the right answers, in the “teaching” of political correctness -- that has supplanted the best tradition of education.

That and that teachers should be the highest paid segment of society because they are the most selfless, self-sacrificing individuals in society who if they weren’t making these great sacrifices, would undoubtedly be making millions doing something else -- winning competitive eating contests or whatever their unique talent is.

The great problem of contemporary society is the self-regulation of the narrow self-interest group to dictate their value to the rest of society -- which is uniquely “the problem” of government, but now being outrun by the simple capacity to be alternatively informed.

The 20th century was the heyday of the mass media and its strategies and tactics; the 21st century still unfolding, is the rise of what has been called the 5th estate of the alternative media -- beyond the well-known 4th estate of the press (mainstream media).

What’s important is not that everybody thinks alternatively, but that the best do -- because they are the natural leaders and shapers of the future, despite what the majority (largely manipulated by others) believes and controls. Largely and lately, that is controlling and suppressing themselves -- with all their rules for suppressing dissent; they become their own greatest, ultimate victims. That’s how the world works and creates its own justice.

The majority is usually not right but might -- which need not be the furthest possibilities of “right.” It usually is the fact that those who turn out ultimately to be right, were in fact, the first and only -- but because they had arrived at their conclusion independently and first-hand, had the unshakable conviction that the majority did not -- but merely awaited orders on the next “truth” to believe. They may have even been reinforced in their thinking that everything was only a convenient truth, subject to the next marketing campaign to change their “beliefs.”

That was the strength of the mass media -- and other institutions of popular learning of information that changed from day to day. What was said from day to day, could change with whomever paid the advertising for that day. What changed all that was the virtual memory of being able to archive and access everything that was previously said -- unless one chose not to make it available anymore, and in that way, assure that one was always right, by eliminating when one was wrong, and selecting (editing) all the information in that consistency.

Eternal, unvarying truths, don’t create the need for more information in this way.

 

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