We have to realize that we are as deeply afraid to live and to love as we are to die.
R. D. LaingRead
Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.'s if possible.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that society often negatively influences the natural intelligence of children, turning them into less capable adults despite high IQs.
R. D. Laing's quote reflects a critical viewpoint on how societal norms and educational systems can stifle the innate potential and wisdom of children. It implies that rather than nurturing their natural curiosity and intelligence, we often impose limitations and conformist thinking, resulting in individuals who may excel academically yet lack true understanding and creativity.
In practice
In a speech about the education system, one might use this quote to highlight the flaws in how we educate children.
We have to realize that we are as deeply afraid to live and to love as we are to die.
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.
Whether life is worth living depends on whether there is love in life.
The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.
The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.
Here we have the paradox, the potentially tragic paradox, that our relatedness to others is an essential aspect of our being, as is our separateness, but any particular person is not a necessary part of our being.
But once we realize that people have very different kinds of minds, different kinds of strengths -- some people are good in thinking spatially, some in thinking language, others are very logical, other people need to be hands on and explore actively and try things out -- then education, which treats everybody the same way, is actually the most unfair education.
Like all readers, I want my limits to be drawn by my own sensibilities, not by my melanin count.
I cannot imagine myself fitting into the existing curriculum. I am too self-willed for that and have had my own very definite ideas for a long time, very different from the existing ways, as to how architecture is to be taught.
One principle problem of educating software engineers is that they will not use a new method until they believe it works and, more importantly, that they will not believe the method will work until they see it for themselves.
When I'm documenting, for example, a story on women in Afghanistan, I will do a huge amount of research and a lot of time on the ground just getting to know the women before I even start shooting.
The multitude of books is making us ignorant.
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