My dear daughter,
A lot of people, in this age of entertainment, only care about what impresses their senses. Like food, streaming shows and pre-digested information on their favorite social network.
It isn’t just what impresses the senses, it’s rather simple content. That which makes you feel good or numb and doesn’t require a lot of thinking; which can be enjoyed passively.
There is a great deal of materialism, for sure, but it’s more of a taste for the concrete and immediate in opposition to the abstract.
It’s not simply a flaw of capitalism. Before smartphones, TV or internet, most people rested their thoughts on daily affairs, work, seeding season, harvest season, festivals, religion and local gossip.
This is not just because people are vain. For millions of years our small groups were travelling the savannah and it was important to know what each member was doing, in order to maximize the chances of survival. Some activities increased group cohesion and religion played a role in this. When we had to worry all the time about obtaining the next meal, it was best to focus thoughts on work and practical matters.
Work is regarded as a very important matter even today, for slightly different reasons. There is huge inequality in the world and it’s interesting for the very few super-rich if the other 90% is too busy working or thinking about work and surviving till the next month.
My point is, it’s a sad waste of mental capacity. Nature had all this trouble to give us these large brains for us to remain slaves of thoughts and behaviors which are not so important in modern society.
Of course critical and abstract thinking have always been important, ever since antiquity, but back then I can understand it was much more difficult to gather the necessary conditions for a person to dedicate a good portion of her time to reflection or abstract thinking. You needed a lot of people working in the fields in order to sustain one person in the polis, who wouldn’t have to worry all the time about getting her meals. So she could dedicate her thoughts to philosophy, engineering or mathematics.
Why is it important to be able to free oneself from this natural propensity towards the concrete and practical? Well, earning money to survive still is a very practical matter.
All of our greatest achievements as a civilization and as an intelligent species came from reflection, reasoning, abstract thinking. We could still be living in primitive conditions and thriving as a species, but look at everything we have achieved with philosophy, mathematics and language.
It’s also not just about humankind’s concrete achievements. It’s the realization of being able to use our minds to the fullest to understand as much as possible about the universe around us. If you have a brain which is capable of understanding the universe, what is the value of life if you don’t use it to understand the universe, but to keep on satisfying animal needs?
Love,
Dad
Aspergers Dad 