Monday, November 30, 2020

Ideas worthy of discussion


Strikes me that there are two types of people in the world, those that inhabit the domain of ideas, and thrive there, and those that don't. Eleanor Roosevelt is often quoted for suggesting that great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events and small minds discuss people. I can kind of see where she was going with that but I don't totally agree, in my experience the domain of ideas is often as much about who has the idea as the idea itself, you can have the best idea in the world but if you don't have the personality, drive, incentives, resources, contacts, platforms etc. to spread it then it might as well not exist and therefore won't be "discussed". Of course you can have an idea (even a bad one) and give/sell/lose it to someone with these attributes who can go on to exploit it, but it's still mainly about people. For me Socrates was closer to the mark when he said that the "unexamined life was not worth living" and I think that's true. It seems to me that an essential component of happiness and feeling fulfilled in ones life is to be curious and possess a spirit of adventure that leads to new ideas and experiences, ideas that are worthy of discussion.

 

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