I have
developed a rather nuanced view of friendship. On the one hand, qualities such
as honesty, kindness, and adequacy help make and maintain friendships. However,
there is an opposing trend: educated and intelligent people are, on average,
lonelier than others. Arthur Schopenhauer (2000) wrote about this phenomenon.
Friendship
requires common interests. For many, these interests might include football,
beer gatherings, or fishing. However, such activities are often not appealing
to more intelligent individuals.
Sectarians,
on the other hand, do not typically suffer from a lack of communication. People
join sects not necessarily because their faith makes them happy, but for more
practical reasons—sects provide a sense of community and connections. In a
sect, one can find a spouse, rent or lease an apartment, etc. The necessity of
having unusual beliefs to join a sect seems to make these individuals more
successful and adaptable within that context.
The general
idea of this post can be summarized as follows: for friendship, people need
common goals and hobbies. The lower a person's level of critical thinking, the
easier it is for them to adopt various misguided goals or trivial hobbies,
which help them bond with like-minded individuals.
Schopenhauer wrote:
"Nothing
betrays less knowledge of humanity than to suppose that, if a man has a great
many friends, it is a proof of merit and intrinsic value: as though men gave
their friendship according to value and merit! As though they were not, rather,
just like dogs, which love the person that pats them and gives them bits of
meat, and never trouble themselves about anything else! The man who understands
how to pat his fellows best, though they be the nastiest brutes—that’s the man
who has many friends.
“It is the
converse that is true. Men of great intellectual worth, or, still more, men of
genius, can have only very few friends; for their clear eye soon discovers all
defects, and their sense of rectitude is always being outraged afresh by the
extent and the horror of them.
“A man can
be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he
will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.
“To live
alone is the fate of all great souls."
Sad but true. I remembered the story about the great Julian Schwinger, then I quote Wikipedia:
ОтветитьУдалитьDuring Schwinger's graduate studies, Rabi felt that it would be good for Julian to visit other institutions around the country, and Julian was awarded a travelling fellowship for the year 37/38 which he spent at working with Gregory Breit and Eugene Wigner. During this time, Schwinger, who previously had already had the habit of working until late at night, went further and made the day/night switch more complete, working at night and sleeping during the day, a habit he would carry throughout his career. Schwinger later commented that this switch was in part a way to retain greater intellectual independence and avoid being "dominated" by Breit and Wigner by simply reducing the duration of contact with them by working different hours.
However, I would like to hope that there is friendship, which is contrary to logic and interests. Honest and sincere friendship, mutually beneficial for both in terms of development, because everyone has defects.
Wigner was the physicist who suggested "Wigner's friend" paradox in quantum mechanics?
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