How Socialization Makes You Stupid
“The supreme lesson of any education should be to think for yourself and to be yourself; absent this attainment, education creates dangerous, stupefying conformity.”
Bryant McGill
“Just sit alone in a room and think.” - Leo Gura
Why do I struggle with socialization?
Why don’t I like socialization?
It interferes with highest values. It interferes with original thinking and takes me away from truth.
Socialization introduces a pressure to conform to social values that may not be compatible with my own.
There are hidden costs to socializing.
It is possible to socialize consciously but a lot of it is unconscious.
People are dumb through conformity. They tend to not think original thoughts and are subject to groupthink.
Even smart people and spiritual people are made dumb by socialization.
People are constantly parroting things they had heard elsewhere and are not speaking or thinking original thoughts.
Original thinking takes a lot of work. I need to take more time to do this.
Almost nobody spends time doing intellectual original work.
How can I reach the highest levels of intelligence? Avoiding socializing and groupthink and spending time alone contemplating.
The majority of humans have not fallen in love with intelligence.
Conformity and groupthink are the main obstacles to achieving intelligence and originality/creativity.
The cost of socializing is that the mind gets infected by herd mentality and values.
The most intelligent people in history were loner, reclusive men.