John Locke

So, I'm brushing up on my John Locke in preparation for my Civics classes, and I start to daydream about the idea of ego as this relates to intelligence. This is how my mind works:

Wow, John Locke (JL) is so right on brilliant. I bet that if I had been a woman around during his life, he would have been a pleasant and kind person. But I'm a woman, and maybe he would have been a bastard to women. Or, perhaps he would have been made arrogant by his awareness of his own potentiality? Well, I can't assume that JL would be nice to me...if I were alive and living in Holland or London, or wherever, and I saw him at a party, I would bow (metaphorically speaking) to the awesome power of his intellect, and ..not approach him, but stand back, with profound respect for his brilliance. It then dawned on me that this stream of ideas in my head were absolutely ego-driven. Because, I make the assumption that I am smart enough to recognize what brilliance looks and acts like, and that my opinion is valid because I act on behalf of my opinions...as most of us do simply by deciding what to eat: what tastes good or bad, what we say, painfully trying to be as articulate and exact as possible (when I'm not depressed), where to walk, what door to open or close...and that, obviously I perceived myself to be capable of such divine fact finding, and, what is worse, perhaps, is that I obviously place a higher premium on people whom I perceive to be very intelligent, over people I perceive to be less intelligent -- even though, to my mind, I treat everyone equally, which is a contradiction to say the least!


Of course I think Locke is brilliant because my ideas...values align with his; and I value myself as capable of saying, ah, he is brilliant! I can say that because I know what brilliance looks like.
So, I guess I've exemplified, in small part, Locke's question around examining our own ability to accurately recognize, judge...the ideas of another.

Suffice it to say that, even with all of this babbling, I still would not approach him on the street, and I would be awed with the hindsight of a 21c. advantage.

welcome to my world.