Great Minds? Maybe Not

 Posted by on 19 July 2012 at 11:00 am  Communication, Personality
Jul 192012
 

Guess what, folks? It’s not small-minded, second-handed, or otherwise undesirable to be interested in people. People are amazing wellsprings of knowledge, innovation, and values. They’re complex, nuanced, and unique. People matter to our lives, hugely.

Unless you allow other people to trump facts, to be interested in people is not any kind of moral or intellectual taint. To condemn that is to claim moral superiority based on differences in personality and preference. That is a mistake — a huge mistake.

Yes, I’m aware the poster probably means to condemn gossip, but not all gossip is malicious, destructive, or petty. Gossip can be a form of benevolent interest in other people in your community, as I discussed in this webcast.

  • Ali Krzton

    This is a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt.

    • John P

      Somehow fits. But frankly, I’ve wondered since I saw this how meaningful this is.

  • Clarance

    I have always thought that this quote was an evaluation of the way various types of people deal with the world around them. Take, for example, the issue of Obama’s birth certificate. Those who were most preoccupied with this were people who held the most contradictory mish-mash of philosophical premises. Their “small minds” made it impossible to consider anything else besides the simple fact that if he wasn’t born in this country, he wasn’t Constitutionally qualified to be President. They couldn’t even grasp what an “average” mind does about it: that if it’s true that he wasn’t born in the US, that makes him a liar, and that event (lying) is what actually disqualifies him; not primarily his place of birth. Then, of course, neither type of mind, was able to see what the “great” mind – the more philosophically coherent mind – saw: that it really doesn’t matter where Obama was born, or if he lied about it. What really disqualifies him from being President is his policies and philosophical fundamentals. Those alone proves that he is both intellectually and/or morally unequipped to hold the office. Such lesser minds certainly wouldn’t be able to see the idea that if it’s a person’s fundamentals which disqualifies him then it should it not matter where he was born or what he said about it. The fundamentals themselves impeach his character. This is why, the greater the mind, the less interest there was in this issue. It just didn’t surprise them that someone who held the ideas Obama holds might try a trick like that. It was to be expected.

   
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