What I Learned: 11 Jan - 17 Jan

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 Here's what I learned this week;

  • Intelligence is a muscle that needs to be trained, exercised and challenged. Unfortunately, I have not been directly doing so. Yes, when I watch the, more than, occasional commentary video I am training my intelligence, much like the walk to work can, technically, be counted as exercise. But the primary purpose of that consumption is entertainment, not education. So, I need to be more intentional in training my intelligence. From next week, I'll end these posts with a commentary on what I learned from a paper I read, a documentary I watched or podcast I listened to.
  • I hate, absolutely fucking hate, the idea that African nations were given democracy. We were not given democracy, we fought for it. We bled for it. We die for it. It was not a gift from the colonisers, who set up their colonies for their political and capital interests, not for democracy. No one has ever been given democracy. Even the Americans, the self-proclaimed bastions of democracy, were not given democracy. The same can be said for the Greeks, the culture that birthed Western Democracy were not given democracy.
  • Credibility is not a question of authenticity or rightness. It is the result of consistency; saying or doing the same thing, in the same way ad infinitum. It is why individuals who hold offensive ideals and say patently wrong things can still be credible to their supporters; it is not the rightness of their beliefs, but their consistency that births, nurtures and reinforces their credibility. As such, credibility is also not objective, but wholly subjective; dependent upon the individual against whom that credibility is wielded. All this begs the question, am I credible? To whom am I credible? Am I credible about all things, or some things, and what are those things?
  • It is difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on them not understanding that thing.
See you next week!

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