So recently Neal, Micah, and I were up talking, and Neal mentioned this quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, "Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people." Micah thought it was interesting enough to post as his Facebook status, which was followed by discussion with Andrew and Drew. Andrew asked if it’s a specific person we love, or the idea of love we love. Drew responded with an awesome comment that I think should be slightly more immortalized in note fashion, he said:
“When you talk about that person, you aren't necessarily talking about them, you are talking about how they are important to you, how they make you feel, and how you appreciate what you do with them. All of which are ideas.
Example: Person number 1: I like Mary. (Not so smart). Person number 2: (I like Mary because she kickboxed a jaguar. (Average). Person number 3 (I just saw Mary kickbox a jaguar. I like that because jaguars are pretty aggressive killing machines and Mary makes me feel safe around jaguars. (Smart). Person number three got the same point across with an idea and therefore is probably going to be considered a little smarter in general.”
That’s kind of a tangent though. Another thing brought up in the conversation spurred by Micah’s status post is that “there are X types of people in the world” generalizations are generally stupid. Take the aforementioned on for example, so small minded people talk about people? If I ever talk about people then I’m a simpleton? That’s not very fair, and doesn’t seem accurate. With most any of these X types of people generalizations, people go between the different categories all the time. In fact, the only one I can think of that seems absolute is “there are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don’t.” And I’m not sure it counts because, despite its truth, it’s actually a joke.
I think the better way of rephrasing Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote is, “Simple conversations are about people, average conversations are about events, and intelligent conversations are about ideas.” This sits much better with me personally. I don’t feel like I’m being called simple if I’m talking about people, and I’m certainly willing to acknowledge that “Did you hear that Hugh Jackman is making a new movie?” is more a simple conversation than “if chemically balanced people can show behaviors of chemically imbalanced conditions, is it ever really possible to diagnose someone with a chemical imbalance when observing only behaviors?”
To further explore this the thought behind this quote, what about what we choose to do with our free time? Do we prefer people? Events? Or ideas? This thought occurred to me because I have quite a bit of reading assigned by a teacher who I have two classes with this semester. He is certainly one who encourages ideas. I’m a bit behind on my reading and wondered why it got this way. My first thought was “I just haven’t had time” but I really have. In fact, I read The Hunger Games, and The Way Of Kings (which I’d guesstimate is 6x the length of Hunger Games) so far during the semester. What makes them more desirable than my assigned reading? My conclusion was my novel reading is somewhere between people and events, while the assigned reading fits in the ideas category. Apparently in my free time, simply pursuing ideas isn’t quite a full driving force to me. However, I submit that great minds of the past came to great conclusions because even in their free time they frequently (yet not exclusively, balance much?) choose to interact with ideas.
That’s pretty much my train of thought so far, at this point I should stop procrastinating by writing notes about my ideas, and actually go read some of the aforementioned reading that I’m behind on. But I’ll leave this with a few questions.
#1. What are your thoughts on this?
#2. What other aspects of life do you think this measure can be related to?
#3. Do you think novels (Twilight, Harry Potter, The DaVinci Code, etc…) are better compared to talking about people, or talking about events?
#4. If we have a current measuring method that looks like
<- Simple — Average — Intelligent->
<- People — Events — Ideas ->
What are ways we could modify it to improve its clarity?
No comments:
Post a Comment