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Great Minds Discuss Ideas, Great Men Also Discuss People

August 3, 2018 Dom 1 Comment

great minds discuss ideas

On great minds and great men

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

I used to like that quote because it was often effective in stroking my ego.

My natural inclination has always been to debate ideas, to devalue stories, and to detest gossip. Oh, what a great mind I must be! Yet what disposition of curiosity is actually revealed here? Apparently, I’m highly interested in abstract thinking, less interested in concrete events, and least interested in individual people.

However, can I be a great person without being particularly curious about people (as opposed to humans in general)? Dale Carnegie devoted an entire chapter of How to Win Friends an Influence People to his key advice that one should take a genuine interest in others:

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

This, of course, requires me to talk to people about people, especially themselves, and to resist the temptation to bombard them with all the “great ideas” I have, which (if signaling theory is true) I want to discuss not to solve problems anyway, but primarily to get other people interested in me. I want others to like me, so I signal the greatness of my mind by discussing ideas rather than people. The important question, however, is whether that makes me the most effective version of myself. Naturally, the answer will vary with the social environment I find myself in.

If you have no autistic neuron in your brain, you might feel like I’m taking too literally the initial quote, which seems to relate small minds to gossip rather than curiosity about others. But is there no dispositional correlation between gossiping and taking an interest in others? Both are vital for social bonding and I tend to have trouble distinguishing between the two, at least on a non-moral level.

Read More

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  • Are You Using Your Strengths? (A Six-Week Plan to Improve Your Character)
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Comments

  1. Samantha says

    May 10, 2019 at 4:39 am

    I relate so heavily to everything you said and I’m just now coming to understand how I’ve been presenting as a less effective version of myself to others by trying to sell them the depths of my mind with the hope that they will, in return, be interested in me. Thank you for this.

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The Author

Dom is a European man keenly devoted to the gods of sylvan wisdom. He is also a cognitive scientist and philosopher by training, a data scientist by trade, and a strength athlete and martial artist at heart. [Read more…]

Willpower Condensed

Resources for Personal Growth

Core Concepts

1. Freedom is the degree to which one does one’s True Will.

2. True Will is what one wants to do in a state of mindcoolness.

3. Mindcoolness is the absence of dysfunctional emotions that perturb rational thought and diminish intelligence; more deeply, it is self-knowledge and freedom from egoic identifications.

4. Know thyself, then do what thou wilt.

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