
Originally Posted by
T-6005
What you are is struggling to integrate other people's narratives into your own. It's a problem all of us struggle with, and it's by far the hardest way to deal with other people - but it remains all the more rewarding for all that.
I had an incredible professor, Malcolm Blincow, who just retired this year. He told my class that "Anyone can attack the weak points in an argument, and it is a particularly prevalent practice in academic work. But if you believe that you can truly disprove an argument, attack the strong parts. It deserves nothing less." I'm paraphrasing from a brilliant teacher here, but he struck a very strong chord with me. The less petty the elements you are forced to focus on, the more you must respect your opponent. And this is directed at pretty much everyone here.
I would agree that I "struggle to integrate other people's narratives into [my] own". A lot of my judgements place a lot of weight on personal experience. Even though I try to understand the limits of personal experience, and the important of empirical evidence, I also feel like certain people tend to gravitate towards using established theories to explain all behavior, and miss out on some of the truth because of it. It's a complicated matter that I can't fully explain. I almost feel as though academia in general is too confident in it's theories to explain many phenomena. Perhaps I could think of an example later, but I wanted to at least explain it first. But that's mostly where my "anti-intellectual" sentiment comes from.
And just for the sake of mentioning it, I really like that quote by your teacher. It popped into my mind several times since I've read it a few days ago.
When they said "sit down", I stood up.