Pride of the Intellect

The more I learn about philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology and the world in general, I get a kick out of it because I start to see stark patterns that connect everything- the simple and complex, the mundane and spectacular/dramatic, the basic and elaborate. I know what people want, I know the complexity of their motives, I see the pattern of history and current events, I see the game in social interactions, I see how biology manifests itself spiritually. I know by word the meaning of my life. It gives life a vibrancy that Dr. Jordan Peterson calls "high resolution." I once was blind now I can see. It gets intoxicating and overwhelming.

You can apply it practically in your life. The danger is when you think you can manipulate reality to make it easier for you and you think you can get away with it. You can never get away with because there is no way of manipulating reality, you are not outside of reality, you are a part of it. What you are actually doing when you think you're manipulating reality is you are manipulating people who don't now as much as you. The Pride of the Intellect is a form of deception to others as well as yourself. Any time there is hubris, pride, dishonesty or cunning, there is the great deceiver, except, there is nothing great about the deceiver, he/ she at the core is petty and pathetic, sad that the world does not revolve around him/her.

The more I know, the harder it is to have faith because if I already know something what need do I have of believing it? Yet, I do need to believe it.

Faith is essential to knowing. "Faith is the reasoning of a religious mind." Bishop Robert Barron says it is akin to faith being on the far side of understanding not on the low side. These are not just empty platitudes, struggle to understand this.

This is what I mean: on a personal level, I apply what I know to my life. It works, like inputting commands on your computer but what I ind with this is that I have started to treat myself and other people as machines whose only necessities are plug-in solutions- even if I understand the complexity and am not applying a palliative solution. Of course, part of the problem is that no matter how much knowledge you can acquire, you cannot fool yourself to the idea that you know everything.

Some thing is missing in simply knowing which is present having Faith, or perhaps the former has an insidious quality not present in Faith.Perhaps, simply knowing has Pride attached to it- a falling in love with its own creation- while Faith has Humility, When you try to warp reality with Pride, you corrupt what you know (you may end up mistrusting it or trusting it too much) because to know truth is to be in line with reality. Similar to what Renato M. Corona said the "the a closer a man'ts perception is to reality, the greater the man." (Veneration Without Understanding). You reject Truth when you try to betray reality, a grave sin.

Conversely, Humility is to be in Truth. Like in Dante's Purgatorio, the sinners of Pride learn humility by carrying a large boulder that brings their face close to the dirt. Humility is to be down to Earth, close to reality.

	Created by Angeline Bien almost 9 years ago

Analyzing the dangers of intellect and the way we perceive and manipulate reality and seeking a solution without vilifying knowledge.