Question, Ithaca Times Update!
1. Is an intellectual person necessarily an open minded one?
2. Can an open minded person be conservative?
Intellectual: a person who uses the mind creatively
Broad-minded: inclined to respect views and beliefs that differ from your own
Conservative: Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change
My answers:
1. No, not necessarily!
2. Yes! In fact I think I know a person like that. I mean so far as I know him.
For those of you who have left Ithaca, here is the update: The weather is exceptionally good. Believe it or not there is not even a trace of snow on the ground. I didn't even take my scarf with me today. Social life, as you might imagine, is meaningless at this time of the year. I have been socializing in the internet the last couple of days updating my Persian blog 2 times a day. Our most fun part has been playing with Juge but even he is bored of us. Didn't allow any of us hug him since last night. He looks like he can't wait for Monday to send everyone to school. What else?By now another Brazilian friend should have left for good. We didn't get the chance to see her. I wish her luck for the rest of her life...Hope I see you some day soon:) That 301 office will be really boring this semester. Ok, I am sleepy. Have fun where ever you are. Byee.
posted by Anar @ 1:19 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
These are difficult questions to answer.
I am not really sure what an intellectual is. When I think of that word, I get an impression in my mind of a pretentious know-it-all sort of person. A person who has a need to be perceived as knowing something about everything is probably very insecure inside. Such a person might not be very inclined to respect different views and beliefs. Of course, if an intellectual is defined differently, the answer to the question could be yes, I suppose. As to creativity, I have met some very creative people who were open minded and some others who were not. It depends on the personality of the individual.
Can an open minded person be conservative? Well, that might depend on what such a person is being conservative about. It is good to be conservative about some things. For example, an engineer is hesitant to design too close to the limits of a material's strength. Also, the engineer hesitates to quickly adopt a new design methodology without ample proof of the method's accuracy. The same engineer may well be open minded about matters that have nothing to do with engineering. If the subject is changed to politics, I think that there are many political conservatives and many liberals who are not open minded. They are willing to accept only their own extreme views. I think that a person who is open minded politically is neither conservative nor liberal. Rather, he or she is pragmatic and willing to accept a solution to a political problem that works, without being concerned about the ideologies of the right or the left.
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