(Untitled)

[ath8na]

So, sometime senior year of high school I said something like the following to Miranda

Comments

go my google skills

[squiffybob]

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
- George Orwell, 1984

The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

Re: go my google skills

[haikusamurai]

I was about to say it sounded like doublethink, but you beat me to it.

Plus Miranda's all high on 1984, so I would bet that would be it.

Re: go my google skills

[ath8na]

Good work Bob!

[kleindreamer]

siddhartha has a bit like that. Wisdom involves seeing that it is only because of the limits of human comprehension that two contradictory things cannot be true-accepting paradoxes is intelligenc/wisdom.

Ditto the orwell.

[cilroi]

Dunno about 'height of intellectual power' (I suspect that might have been about the time I was 2 and managed to learn to talk despite my three sisters never allowing me a chance to get a word in compacted to microsize, let alone edgewise), but certainly it is part of where the last 5-6 years of thought have led me. Most of what I have observed about society, combined with what seems to be a good idea for society, when followed all the way through logically leaves me in a place of contradiction. A lesser example of this, one I remember discussing with your mum a few years ago (drinking coffee outside the Burke), is that it is a good idea for society to provide a net for those people who find it difficult to function - the dole, basically. And yet, when there is a reasonably good system in place, such as there is here in Britain, then I find that people who would be better off working, for various reasons to do with self-esteem and health, will gravitate towards a system that makes their life seem easier, i.e. not working. They would