thought was influenced greatly by what the peers or the general
consensus was - when Einstein wrote his congratulations to critics. To
paraphrase, what he wrote was something akin to congratulating critics
because they speak their mind without succumbing to the general
population, without being influenced by the crowd. That was a time
when education was not available to everybody - or even if it was -
the power of reasoning was not commonplace.
One can argue that it isn't commonplace today either - and that would
be a valid argument considering we still get influenced by society -
and there wouldn't be another way to live among other society members.
But we as human beings have better understanding of everything in the
world (and less of ourselves, but that is a completely different
conversation) than the people during Einstein's times.
Today, being a critic is sort of following the herd too. It has become
commonplace to just state that you disagree and "speak your mind".
What we really need is people who can reason their way to disagreement
by looking at both the positives and negatives of what they are
disagreeing with and what they are agreeing with. It would take much
longer to do of course - and it is a lot less fun than just claiming
to disagree - but at least we aren't just speaking our mind because,
well... everyone else is doing it.
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