I guess that that is a common response to the proverb:
Or, as Bruce Lee is said to have said:
Here's how I--a wise man or a fool?-- apply that lesson. Begin by supposing that there is something in every wrong-sounding statement that you hear. After all, according to everyone's framework everything that they think or say makes perfect sense.
In short, accept every thought or idea as a po statement (see Edward de Bono). Keep your mind open. Suspend judgment. You will definitely learn something.
For example, someone claims that no one died in the holocaust. 'Preposterous' is your automatic response. Put as much distance between yourself and whoever uttered that blasphemy. After all, you can be put away for such a thought. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as mind crime.
But hold. Don't rush. Refrain from screwing up your face.
No one died? Maybe . . . death does not exist. Or perhaps . . . you have marely hastened the inevitable. Everyone dies. That is a given, and it is automatic. It's not by killing someone that you are doing something which could have been avoided. So when you are told that radioactive fall out killed 250,000, and you learn thereafter that it shortened those people's lives by several weeks--but fifty years in the future--what does that imply?
See? What at first you react to as nonsense can be ratteled around and used as cerebral ammunition. Don't be too hasty to shoot a nontruth down in flames.
Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise. Cato the Elder
Or, as Bruce Lee is said to have said:
A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
Here's how I--a wise man or a fool?-- apply that lesson. Begin by supposing that there is something in every wrong-sounding statement that you hear. After all, according to everyone's framework everything that they think or say makes perfect sense.
In short, accept every thought or idea as a po statement (see Edward de Bono). Keep your mind open. Suspend judgment. You will definitely learn something.
For example, someone claims that no one died in the holocaust. 'Preposterous' is your automatic response. Put as much distance between yourself and whoever uttered that blasphemy. After all, you can be put away for such a thought. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as mind crime.
But hold. Don't rush. Refrain from screwing up your face.
No one died? Maybe . . . death does not exist. Or perhaps . . . you have marely hastened the inevitable. Everyone dies. That is a given, and it is automatic. It's not by killing someone that you are doing something which could have been avoided. So when you are told that radioactive fall out killed 250,000, and you learn thereafter that it shortened those people's lives by several weeks--but fifty years in the future--what does that imply?
See? What at first you react to as nonsense can be ratteled around and used as cerebral ammunition. Don't be too hasty to shoot a nontruth down in flames.
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