A Challenge to Our Intelligence and Ability to Discern

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Write whatever you want. I read them all—whether these are surveys, recipes, birthday missives, ads, news, eulogies, whatnots, and other "out-of-this-world" stuff. I'm a sucker for knowledge. I read, read, and read, analyze, strain, and then keep the stuff I like and put those I dislike somewhere near so I may have them handy in case I'll need them. You will never know.

There was a time when all the writings of Charles Darwin were considered preposterous, atheistic and stupid. Many people looked at him condescendingly, branding him evil. Look at Darwin's writings now. They have long been regarded as one of the greatest foundations of humanity.

What about Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung? Many people discredit them, but have the same people actually read their works? Before discrediting something or someone, we must first be sure that we are in a stout position to criticize. Let's read and understand first the work in question or know the author's motivation, or at least be considerably familiar with the person and his work.

Like for instance, don't say you abhor J. K. Rowling for her having written books about witchcraft when in fact you haven't read any Harry Potter book, which teaches so many lessons in growing up and in braving Life itself. And what's wrong with witchcraft, anyway? Isn't this just a part of myth and literature?

"Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."—Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," Self-Reliance and Other Essays

Believe me, all humans have the tendency to share what they think and feel, basically because we are naturally gregarious. No person should, indeed, remain an island; for if she chooses to, she loses her sense of community and affinity with society and the world. And, "humankind cannot live without a world."

Take information overload as a challenge to our intelligence and ability to discern. Let us not get accustomed with and lie idly on our own laurels and righteousness. What we thought all along was right and good could, after all, be wrong and bad. To be continually updated is to be continuously undaunted. The battle of good versus evil will always be subjective. There'll always be gray areas in the spectrum of life.

Time has long proven that censorship and curtailing of ideas are not answers to sanitizing the world—because, to begin with, there are no asnwers, for no one can ever sanitize the world.

My deities! How many cultures does the world have; more so, races, peoples, individuals? We can never be united; we can never have one vision and one religion. There can never be only black and white, for even the rainbow has not the capacity to emit all the colors of the universe.

The key to the peace and unity that we are all aiming for is understanding and acceptance—of everyone's idiosyncrasies and eccentricities, and of the diverse bodies of knowledge that we can avail for free.

Broadening our horizons and trying different options which can suit each of our own needs are far better than remaining stagnant and complacent and depriving ourselves of many things worthy of our analysis and understanding.

"What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand."—Ralph Waldo Emerson, "History," Self-Reliance and Other Essays