The Nature Of Greatness

Evolution, or perhaps it is little more than chance,

made it so that we have a tendency to follow.

Richard Dawkins demonstrates that very well in his

"What If You Are Wrong?" response.

We will believe in things that we are born to,

what surrounds us becomes our reality.

The individuals born with a tendency to question elders,

are forced to abandon their ways, or worse.

Pandemics are an eye opening moment,

it is the beings that questioned religions,

that initially inspired the sciences.

Any religion that attacks the vaccines,

will quickly change its mind,

or perish.

Reality,

always wins.

There is no point arguing against reality,

it makes us better, stronger, reliable, dignified.

But just because you know all this,

does not mean that this is simple.

Philip Zimbardo, and Daniel Amen,

bring up some extremely powerful research.

Many of us have heard of the The Stanford Prison Experiment,

where ordinary people all of a sudden become terrible when given the role of guard.

But Dear Philip Zimbardo,

didn't stop at the prison, I believe he immediately understood what was going on.

He might have even created The Stanford Prison Experiment,

to test a theory.

The theory of how our surroundings,

influence our mental health.

Personally, by surroundings I mean the whole thing,

from the cubicle walls, to weasel CEOs, to do nothing approach in politics, all the way out to active concentration camps and legal slavery.

See,

Mr. Zimbardo is correct.

Not only must we learn to become Knowledge,

but we have to reject all the evil, injustice, and mediocrity that has become the norm.

If we don't reject all the ongoing mistakes,

we will become ill, it will get to us.

So you are not just on a quest to become Knowledgabe and Wise,

but also on a quest to reject all the wrong things that have become the norm.

Here is Mr. Zimbardo explaining what I mean in the first 59 seconds of his talk entitled:

TEDxMidwest - Phil Zimbardo - Heroes

We have to alter the entire Human Environment,

of course reality is on our side.

To take prisons as example, Daniel Amen explains a new insight into the criminal mind,

see The most important lesson from 83,000 brain scans by Daniel Amen.

To repeat that Dostoyevsky quote:

"A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens, but by how it treats its criminals."

This is correct, prisons were always unethical, but Daniel Amen explains why,

many of those people are very ill, and the environment of the prison and the hopelessness that they from thinking about us being our here, is making them even more ill.

House arrest is fine, crazy long community service is not too bad so as long as it involves minimum wage,

but our best approach is preventing people from entering a life of crime, that is exactly what Mr. Zimbardo is going.

He is helping children resist the influence that their environment has on them,

his legacy is not going to be the Prison Experiment, but the Heroic Imagination Project.

As we become more and more knowledgeable and wise, and strong,

we have to learn to stand against what is wrong with the world.

It is not just about us being Knowledgeable and Wise,

but also helping others to see the countless things that made us that way.

This is called Greatness, becoming strong on the inside,

and then making Wise, Meaningful, Inspirational and Lasting constructions to our word, and encouraging others to do the same.