Most of my friends will have noticed that quite a few times in a month, I will bring up a topic, podcast, or book and over zealously try to share it with anyone who will listen. I’m sure it’s quite annoying and obnoxious sometimes, but I hope everyone realizes it comes from a desire to share something unique or a new perspective and that I think will benefit those close to me. There is also probably some element of miss placed ego on my part, as if me sharing information somehow made me more intelligent or admirable. I know it doesn’t, and I apologize for any selfish drives I may have.
But this really is something important to me. Recently Kevin Hart echoed this sentiment while talking to Joe Rogan. He said it’s all about Information, its about sharing information. The more aware we are, the more informed and curious and mentally diverse, the better lives we can lead. I spend copious amounts of time, since I’m basically a vagrant and the least successful person I know, searching for new topics and ideas to explore. Over the past 6 or 7 years this has broadened my interests almost exponentially. I want to share some of those ideas and topics with those I think it will benefit most. Or even more important and exciting, is sharing it with my friends who will challenge and question the information.
I want to have more stimulating debates and conversations. I want to be pushed mentally to revise my ideas, see new perspectives, and discover new truths, especially about our shared beliefs and ideals, and what we take for granted.
I hope to start journaling more about this, as I come across new information, and share it in small digestible ways for friends to engage with. I hope it will lead to more conversations, more sharing of ideas, more debates, occasional yelling, but overall, a closer community of friends who love to expand their understanding.
With that goal in mind, I will try to keep a record of my thoughts and interests, and share it once a week (we’ll see how that goes), here. I will try to be brief, just offering enough information to entice friends to listen/read for themselves, and most importantly, follow up with those who want to, to have some conversation after.
I want to thank Seth for inspiring me on this, with his initiative to get a group of like minded but diverse friends together once a month to share ideas and just talk. It was a great experience, even if I only went once, but that kind of interaction should be supported and tried more often. So this is my small way of wanting to create something similar.
I’m writing this to hold myself accountable, and to push myself to make the time to write and reflect. We’ll see how it goes.
The People Like Us: Hidden Brain
To begin, here is an episode of Hidden Brain which focuses’ on an incredibly controversial topic, made all the more relevant by the Covid 19 Epidemic. It centers on the topic of racism, and how some ways of addressing it raise other moral dilemma’s. The podcast brings up the uncomfortable reality that often minority groups are better served by members of their own group rather than others. African American students perform better when taught by an African American teacher. Women have the same result in University math courses taught by female professors. With this information, should we push or even force more minority groups or genders to be taught or influenced by their own groups to help them? I found this topic incredibly revealing as I am a North American teacher, teaching in South East Asia. Does my own upbringing, despite being ethnically diverse, make me a less viable teacher to my Thai students? Are there boundaries, social norms, cultural elements that I can just not grasp and somehow impede their learning? It’s a strange bizarre gray area, but its a very interesting topic to think about.
Give it a listen, and let me know your opinions or thoughts. I really want to talk about it. Whether we agree or disagree.