How to Think About People

Ways I want to get better at seeing and listening

"Every epistemology becomes an ethic," the educator Parker ].

Palmer once observed. "The shape of our knowledge becomes the shape of our living; the relation of the knower to the known becomes the relation of the living self to the larger world." Palmer is saying that the way we attend to others determines the kind of person we become. If we see peo... See more

Benjamin Monlezun added 6mo

When looking at my family or friends that judge first (which I can even do) - this is the argument or the recognition of why they (and I) should change.

I think too, that social media harms our ability to cultivate the qualities of an Illuminator - to care and see others. That we are not one thing at one time. That we all have grains of the same qualities with a soul that changes from moment to moment.

For Murdoch, the essential immoral act is the inability to see other people correctly. Human beings, she finds, are self-centered beings, anxiety-ridden and resentful. We are constantly representing people to ourselves in self-serving ways, in ways that gratify our egos and serve our ends. We stereotype and condescend, ignore and dehumanize. And be

Benjamin Monlezun added 6mo

One of the commonest and most generally accepted delusions is that every man can be qualified in some particular way— said to be kind, wicked, stupid, energetic, apathetic and so on.

People are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic or vice versa; but... See more

Benjamin Monlezun added 6mo

How to think of any person as just like me - and how I’d want to be seen. Thanks Tolstoy.

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