Intellectual enlightenment: a method

By Jade Connor

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the supercomputer Deep Thought took seven million years to calculate the meaning of life, the universe and everything. As Billy Joel would say, it was the longest time.

Finally, the Time of Waiting was over, and the answer was revealed.

Forty-two.

Unfortunately, this answer is as fictional as Adams’s novel itself, but is there a method for us to develop into human supercomputers so we can better understand our world and ourselves? Yes, there is: to develop towards intellectual enlightenment, read broadly and challenge yourself. Understand, from as many different angles as possible, the context and influences on your own thinking.

SOMETIMES I WISH I WAS 19 again, but only if I had the wisdom I have now. It was ten years ago already, but I remember that age well, because it’s when I changed myself, and my name as well. I rejected my birth name, Aaron, and took my middle name instead. Ten years later, I think back at myself at 19, as Aaron, but I can only think of him in the third person. He’s not me.

Aaron was a submissive, fat nerd who had been building up the courage to ask out a girl he knew. It was on his mind even as he swam laps of the Corinda public pool, trying to conform to oppressive social pressures to have a good body. Tomorrow is the day, he told himself.

At the end of a lap he looked up to see the boy who always came on Fridays.

‘Hi,’ Aaron said, a slight quiver in the voice. ‘You come here every Friday, don’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ Adam replied. ‘I’ve noticed you looking at me the last few weeks.’

‘I tried to get your attention,’ he said, embarrassed.

‘Well, now you have it. Want to come to my place tomorrow?’

One thing led to another, as it so often does, and tomorrow did turn out to be the day—but not the day he would ask out a girl, the day he went to Adam’s house. The day he would admit that he was gay to someone; the day he realised it himself. At 19, he was an ostensibly smart OP1 maths nerd. But then he came out as gay to his family and friends.

Why had fat, gay nerd Aaron been so determined to ask out a girl anyway? Answer: he didn’t know the social and psychological forces influencing his own thinking. His level of free agency was low. He realised he had been pushed around by social forces distorting his view of himself and reality, and he hated it. So he changed his name to Jade and set out to correct his low social awareness by taking a journey of personal learning and discovery.

Around that time Tony, one of Jehovah’s well-dressed witnesses, had been regularly coming to Aaron’s doorstep, every other Sunday for a couple of years.

‘Atheism is very intellectual, and people find it alluring,’ Tony said one day. ‘But has atheism made the world a better place?’

A future Jade would have countered: ‘Even assuming people of faith have better morals, does that prove their belief in God is correct? I want to know the actual truth of how the universe was created.’ But Aaron hadn’t read widely enough for that.

‘The answer is in the Bible. Genesis tells the story of how God created the Earth,’ Tony asserted.

A future Jade would have countered: ‘In The Secular Bible, researched evidence shows that the Bible was actually written by multiple human authors, selectively and cynically edited over thousands of years of human history.’ But Aaron hadn’t read Jacques Berlinerblau’s book either.

In a spirit of open-mindedness, Aaron took many of Tony’s Watchtower magazines. He also tried church, but something inside told him church wasn’t his thing.

The crux of every creation-of-the-universe discussion with Tony was this: he accepted on faith his church’s interpretation of the Biblical explanation.

‘I believe truth is a matter of faith,’ Tony always said.

ONE NIGHT THE TROUBLED AARON had a dream. He was sitting in a bar somewhere in inner Brisbane, drinking away his sorrows like all the other patrons, listening to Billy Joel play Piano Man. Then Joel finished his melody and came over to where Aaron was sitting.

‘That was fantastic, Mr Joel,’ he said. ‘Man, what are you doing here?

‘I go walking in the middle of the night,’ Joel said. ‘I’m looking for something, something so undefined that it can only be seen by the eyes of the blind.’

‘How are you going to find it?’ I asked.

‘Even though I know the river is wide, I walk down every evening and stand on the shore,’ he said. ‘I try to cross to the opposite side so I can finally find what I’ve been looking for. But the river is wide, and it’s too hard to cross.’

It was quite a dream.

Aaron looked back at his life, growing up in regional Queensland. He was starting to mature; he had come out of the closet, and had moved to a big new city. Prima facie, Joel was right—the people who claimed insights into big philosophical questions were usually blind to reality. But he was still curious and he remembered Saint Paul’s advice: ‘When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.’ So he went through the valley of fear, to the river so deep, and looked across Billy Joel’s river towards the desert of the truth. All he knew was that he didn’t want to be pushed around by social forces like the ones that clouded his thinking and made him want to ask out a girl.

He decided not to hold back, and that old person, Aaron, fell dead with a thud. Jade, the new me, jumped out of Aaron’s skin and into the rowboat. He cut the ropes, leaving Aaron behind on the shore, and set sail on the journey.

BUT THESE WERE BIG QUESTIONS, so I needed the help of someone extremely smart. I Googled ‘smartest person in the world’.

Quoted by Plato, Socrates says this: ‘I am the smartest man in the world … I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.’ Well, this sounds pretty kooky, it must be deep, I thought. Socrates was so arrogant, though. Someone should have arrested and charged him with something.

Nonetheless, Socrates had the best advice for those seeking knowledge that anyone has ever had: ask questions, then ask more questions, and question everything. So I read more of the details about Socrates’ method for discovering truth, in The Dialogues—and it was hilarious.

It made me consider more and more questions all the time, for example Why don’t those lefties eat meat? Researching this was tricky, because there was so much spin and rhetoric on the topic, but it paid off. In the end, the real question turned out to be Why does everyone eat meat in the first place? Any intellectually ambitious person should have an informed answer to this question. Dr Michael Klaper’s is at www.allmedphysicians.com/online-videos/a-diet-for-all-reasons.

Now, you might reach a different conclusion to the one I did, but this method can still be applied to any common assumption or social practice. Ask questions and be open-minded. Occasionally you will learn something new that could change your life. Do it as often as possible. Knowledge really is power.

Of course, anyone can ask questions like this, but I wanted to ask questions with a level of sophistication and seriousness. Here are some lessons I learned on my way across the river.

Lesson 1 - Krishnamurti

In The Impossible Question, Krishnamurti asks ‘Do you really know? Do you know in a deep, comprehensive way?’ Of course, people are confronted with facts about the world every day. ‘I know,’ they say. But do they really know? That person who always goes into destructive relationships with abusive men says, ‘I know, I always choose men that are no good for me.’ They grasp the concept, but somehow there is an absence of full comprehension. You should feel that you have fully comprehended a concept, not just in a trivial way, but deeply. As your self-awareness grows, your level of free agency grows.

Lesson 2—Developing expertise

Have you ever wanted to be a brilliant sportsperson, writer, or academic? Or a virtuoso in any other field? The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance tells you how. It examines research into virtuosos, such as musicians and world chess champions, and how they developed absolute expertise. It comes down to the concept of ‘deliberate practice’, practising your skill obsessively and in a deliberate way. Every day you must find a challenge and push yourself to achieve it. As you do this, your level of free agency will grow.

This can be used as a method for developing yourself into a virtuoso of the mind. It’s how you can learn to think for yourself, at an extremely high level. I pushed my mental limits by studying political science, and eventually realised why I had fundamental disagreements with the process-obsessed academics I was originally bound by. Academia is bursting with too many examples of ostensible brainiacs grappling hopelessly with simple problems. Socrates knew this too well.

Lesson 3—The science of the brain

How the brain works has implications for our lives, and is important to understand. Unfortunately, if you repeatedly make a mistake, or go through life accepting a false fact, your brain is so hardwired that it can be hard to realise it. Evolve Your Brain, by Joe Dispenza, shows how the brain calculates thoughts by making connections with thoughts you have had in the past. Neural pathways fire, and make lasting connections that can get stronger or weaker over time. Hormones physically affect the chemical composition of your brain. For example, when couples have sex, chemicals are released into the brain that are like love-drugs, and help keep emotional connections between partners strong. Couples who don’t have sex enough, almost inevitably drift apart.

Dispenza proposes a method for evolving your brain, to develop skills in any field, to break lazy brain habits, and change for the better. I regularly used this self-brain awareness and managed to avoid depression. As my level of awareness grew, so did my level of free agency.

Lesson 4—Logical thinking

I thought I understood logic, being good at algebra and computer programming. But Dr Barbara Sullivan pushed me towards further understanding. Books like Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide by Tracy Bowell and Gary Kemp should be on everyone’s reading list. A virtuosity in recognising the flaws of complex arguments is priceless, and increases your ability to choose and think for yourself.

Lesson 5—Personal psychology

In The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud shows how ‘illusions’ have negative impacts on our thinking. In particular, Freud warns us to avoid the ‘wish fulfilment’ bias. It may be hoping that something is true, like that heaven exists or that the Aryan ‘race’ is superior. It may be hoping that a decision or long-held opinion is right. We all know how painful it is to admit you are wrong, but what about if you have been wrong about something for decades? There are strong desires influencing how we think, and you need to be aware of them. A strong, subconscious hope that something exists or is true holds us back, preventing us from understanding things clearly.

Lesson 6—Read to understand history and context

I also read books that opened up my eyes, allowing me to understand things on a deeper level. Many were in the field of politics: Here I stand, by Bishop John Shelby Spong; Voltaire’s Bastards, by John Ralston Saul; Yes, Minister, by Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay; and The Dilbert Principle, by Scott Adams. Other books made me see the world from a new perspective: The Secular Bible, by Jacques Berlinerblau; Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki; 1984, by George Orwell; Consolations of Philosophy, by Alain de Botton; and The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins.

Reading about history is eye-opening. It helps you put situations and decisions in context, increasing your level of free agency.

Lesson 7—Make an appointment with a mental health professional

I needed help, and you might too.

IN 2011, I REACHED A pivotal moment. There was a jolt, and I realised I had reached the opposite shore. I looked back at the journey, which had been amazing and terrifying. But then I emerged as a new person from the rowboat—an adult. I found I could navigate the desert of truth by looking at the stars, and it was wonderful. It was better than wandering hopelessly through a bland desert life.

Some would say that to go on such an intellectual journey is itself the meaning of life, but this is not true. Life has no meaning—it is an accident of nature, glorious fortitude and evolution that we exist at all. Life was not created for a purpose, it was just created. We only live and die. Well, that’s the answer I found. It may be disappointing, unexciting or unpopular to come to this conclusion, but conclusions should not be based upon what we wish were true.

Do we have free agency, or are we bound by social influences and fated to repeat the mistakes of our parents? I think we are all fated to bumble along through life, unless we are aware of our influences and aware of the social, political, historical and physical context. Know as much about it as you can. Whether people are victims of fate or have free agency varies from person to person along a continuum. It depends on education, knowledge, awareness of all contexts and critical thinking skills. After my journey, and cultivating awareness in myself, I feel more empowered to understand my context.

Of course, my full journey might take a long time, just as it did for Deep Thought. But, oh truth, what else can I do? I’m so inspired by you. Where once I thought my innocence was gone, now I know that happiness goes on. And it’s more than I hoped for. So start the journey, like I have, if you haven’t already.

∞