Attaching ego to intellect is dangerous. There are many problems in our world, and what humanity urgently needs is openness to change–meaning my willingness to be wrong about the beliefs I hold sacred. We easily attach our identity to our rightness (self-admission). Having the right opinion turns into a sense of moral superiority. Just look at the political talk from both sides; you’ll see this everywhere. We know so little; how can we afford to be prideful about what we know? We should want to be proven wrong and expect it to happen. There’s no reason to feel good about yourself if you’re right, or bad if you’re wrong. Losing an argument is exciting: that’s how we learn and improve our lives! I have been very wrong before, and I will be very wrong again. If I go through life never changing my beliefs or opinions, I have to ask myself, have I become close-minded or prideful? Am I open to change, do I look down on people who hold different views to the point where I’m not even willing to listen to them, because I’m so convinced they’re stupid and hateful–Just listen to our political rhetoric: this is everywhere.
Certain religious and dogmatic systems encourage attaching ego to intellect, for being right in religion is a matter of the most extreme importance. Fail the divine quiz about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell–what’s the right answer to this question–and you lose everything. Right belief in religion is the most important matter; it’s the basis of faith and salvation. But this is not real life.
In real life, openness is everything. Being open means having the superpower to evolve, to become a better person and make a better world. We must drop our egos around intellect at all costs. We need to be proven wrong and prove each other wrong in order to heal and grow as a society. We are so privileged to live in an age of information, where we have the opportunity to be constantly changing our faulty beliefs and improving our lives. Why would you want to stay in a state of ignorance? The only reason we make this choice is that we feel ashamed when we are wrong, like I’m a better or more awesome person if I am righter than you. This is not wisdom, and it’s not even smart. If we want to raise our consciousness, we must come to take our intellectual grasp on the world with a sense of humor and lightness, understanding who we are–tiny little animals in a great big universe of stuff far beyond our cerebral powers.
