The pursuit of intelligence is tough. I am humbled by Sir Francis Bacon, who made the ultimate sacrifice — he died while in a quest for knowledge, he is a martyr of the cause.
My memory of him from school was that he was suspected by some to be the real Shakespeare. He was ribboned by noble anecdotes that I savored — but during that the time, I had a very casual relationship with truth.
We explored the real meaning of intelligence by absorbing and learning thousands of pages, especially those that had blood in it.
I stumbled upon some of the strangest, finest, most profound facts about everything under the sun. I dabbled with reference books, as I vacuumed up information hour after hour, spraining the brain (you can’t fracture it) and feeding my mind with the highest quality of nourishment — the kind that fed philosophers like Socrates, Kant, Santayana and Tolstoy.
I stuffed myself with knowledge until they dribbled out of my ears. However, you cannot define intelligence simply by the amount of information that you’ve absorbed – there’s very little correlation between hours of reading, even if somehow there must be some link between knowledge and intelligence.
Some say, that facts maybe the flying buttresses while intelligence is the cathedral. Fact is the fuel and intelligence, the car.
I don’t know the exact relation or how sparse is the net content of the mind, with intellectual hubris.
But the quest for knowledge requires sacrifice. I read in the morning, I read at night.
I’m on the verge of losing friends because I’ve missed several hours of important coverages, including several hours of crucial television.
All of my newfound knowledge bubbles up in my brain – and the growing collection of facts keeps overlapping with my life, even at a strange time. The little sparkle happens so often, I wish I could possibly work them all into conversation, without sounding pedantic or sophomoric.
I still can’t understand Marxism (except but as a nice theory). It would be great if there were no poverty and everyone cooperated, because in reality, what we’ve been taught was that it would cause “ the weakening of the state” or that “capitalism contains the seed of its own destruction.” I still can’t find a flawless logic in these catch phrases.
Our acquired knowledge has the pleasure of imagination and memory added to it. It recalls feelings and association which we can never have again in any other way.
They become landmarks and guidelines in our journey through life — like pegs and loops in which we can hang on, tokens of records of our happiest hours, the surprises and excitements no longer summonable, as we allow a breath of autumn to invade our hearts today.
Our tastes would decay, as time and age pass us by. There were judgments that were faulty; a right decision, wrongly made.
And of romantic love (a subject in which I had more burning interest at seventeen, than I now have at seventy), it has that kind of mistiness that may have been overvalued with youth.
Now, I look for clarity above all. Nothing can prevent me from enjoying political opinions I used to detest.
Now, I can look at the incomprehensibly horrible: bombs dropped, bodies smashed…
Because from that part of man, which sings and writes; which paints and prays; which laughs and cries — those who still believe in each other we’ll just have to find the wonderful and celebrate it.
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