Piwin -> RE: That bit with Sanders / Clinton (Feb. 22 2016 18:20:34)
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quote:
I remember when I first joined the foro back in '05. I had emigrated from Argentina into the US and had been living in the US for a couple of years already. At that point, I was on my 2nd year of college studying Mechanical Engineering. I should mention that I did not know English when I first came to this country and I was forced to learn it on my own since the ESL courses offered were just plain useless. And let's also consider Engineering is not an easy degree to obtain. Yet, I ended up graduating top 5 in my Mechanical Engineering class. Kudos! quote:
After several years of interacting with other American students and living in the country, I realized that finding someone decently intelligent was hard to do. I met a lot of intelligent individuals, but they were a big minority compared to the large amount of average or below-average people. And thus, I made a post in this foro in '05-'06 about how I perceived a lot of Americans to be stupid. I recall I even threw a 50% figure at it. The reaction from the foro was almost unanimous and one of hate and despise for having made such a statement. I understand the perception. The problem being that intelligence is very difficult to define. There are many different kinds of intelligence and many different fields in which that intelligence can be applied. My overall impression of the US (last time I was there, i.e. 4 years ago) was not that people were less intelligent; rather they were less informed than in my part of Europe. For example, I remember having a discussion with a couple from Nashville. Kind people, but very much on the opposite side of the political spectrum from myself. They were vary much against gay marriage. However, when I told them that, for instance, that there were issues such as visitation rights (jail or hospital), inheritance rights, etc. etc. etc. that gay people were being deprived of, they were suprised. They had never considered that simply because they had never got that information. Though I believe they are still against gay mariage, I think they were very much appalled that nothing had been done to ensure these basic rights for gay people through another channel. Another issue is interest or curiosity, but this seems to apply to many different cultures. I see a lot of people who are very intelligent but only in a narrow field of expertise and show no interest in learning about other fields. You may know everything about US geography and nothing about the rest of the world. You many know everything about literature but nothing about basic engineering, etc. etc. Whether you define those people as intelligent or not seems very subjective. I was fortunate enough to work in a job where I got to discover many different fields, from banking to car manufacturing, union law for musical composers, the breakdown of tyre treads. At first sight, I wouldn't have thought any of these could be interesting and therefore I would have stayed ignorant about them. Turns out I was quite wrong. But on the whole, people seem to stick to their narrow fields. There's not many polymaths out there anymore. Though I wouldn't agree that your statement (in the words you put it in in this thread) would have deserved any kind of hate or despise, the problem is that it is very difficult to make that kind of statement without being assimilated as something else. Saying that a lot of Americans are stupid comes off as a generalization, and mainly just arrogant. In fact, that is what an arrogant person would say. I'm not saying that's where you're coming from, just that it's easy to imagine people would come to that conclusion. Over the last few years, I've been having somewhat of a similar problem. As someone who has suffered quite a bit at the hands of religious fanatics in my life, I am very openly critical about many of the ideas contained in certain religions. But because of some of my statements on bad ideas and the bad consequences they have, I've been perceived as biggoted or flat out racist (apparently religious belief is a race now...go figure!). But to a certain extent, I understand why: a biggoted person could very well say the exact same thing I would say on certain issues (even if, on the whole, I'd be making an entirely different point from them). And I've since learned how difficult it is to tread that line, to voice my criticisms while laying out the right caveats so that noone would get the impression that I'm saying these things for other, less noble, reasons. I would surmise, without any further knowledge of the facts, that that may very well be what happened to you in that thread you spoke of. Anyways, just a thought!
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