and science imagination,
in the enthusiasm of genius.
~ Benjamin Disraeli
she said
as if there was something wrong with using your brain.
ironically, i thought she was doing pretty much the same, as we discussed the effects of creative parental affection with children.
i postulated that the time well spent with a child could boast their self-confidence, instill values such as independence, creativity, and felicity. she stopped me half sentence to tell me again "you're intellectualizing it."
i couldn't help but laugh and roll my eyes, if only to myself, for as i replied i believed, "you're doing the same thing (you too are intellectualizing)."
we were both analyzing psychological cause-and-effect, except that she was looking at the situation from a different angle, arguing "well, children get a sense that they are loved and the attention confirms that there exists someone to care for them."
okay, so she takes it from the perspective of emotional fulfillment and i look at it from an angle that suggests that therein lies the opportunity for the maturation of the self and the inculcation of enthusiasm for happiness that relies on oneself through the action-oriented use of one's imagination.
in terms of cognitive analysis, what's the difference? one is no more "intellectual" than the other.
just as in this case, and as i've found in others, the term and word "intellect" is misused and abused. intellect merely means the use of one's mental powers, and is used particularly when juxtaposed when one employs one's emotions to make decisions, or reacts based on sentimental stirring.
maybe this is what she was doing. feeling, instead of thinking. of course, i say so cheekily, for all feeling still requires thought. in fact, it is thought itself which is often the cause of dramatic emotion.
somatic feelings are the exception of course, for they are the primary keys to our physiological survival. otherwise, sentiments are contrived cognitively and shamelessly thrive on thoughts themselves—what will she think of me? could i get in trouble? does he love me?
everyone is intellectual. it is only primarily pedants, academics, and scholars who like to apply it as a distinguishing quality which somehow indicates that they think "better," when really they just think more—and more of themselves. Zarathustra put it quite succinctly when he spoke on scholars, "they too wait and gape upon thoughts that others have thought."
"The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown."
~ Albert Einstein
daily archives
l.m