Intellectual Cowardice

This strange topic is centre point of how successful you are likely to get in life, both in material and non-material sense. There are people who exhibit a strange kind of fear or paranoid feeling when confronted with an intellectually challenging situation, and instead of getting into a healthy debate, they close off and usually escape. The questions might relate to way things are done in the organization, or may be related to their faith or their beliefs. When challenged by a non-conformal question, some people just back off. They are afraid to discuss, and they just blurt out that they know it all and there is no point at discussing any further.  The term that is used for such a behavior is intellectual cowardice. This implies and includes: the fear to question, the fear to use intelligence when confronted with a defying question which challenges the way you have been doing things so far, and questions regarding your strategy of life which seems to working for you so far. These people either back off from such questions or resort to aggression.    And that’s where all the progress stops. This is a sign of mental orthodox and complacent behavior. If you are able to take questions like these with intelligent thought process and able to modify your own set of beliefs based on logical reasoning,  you evolve and go to the next level.  Most successful people are those who have courage to raise questions and more importantly courage to face questions regarding their own selves.  These are people who help the organizations and process evolve by challenging and in turn promoting a culture of questioning from time to time, which is so vital for a personality or an organization to grow.    

If everything that you know was perfect and unquestionable, then why does science keep surprising us with new discoveries, why do people keep finding new ways to make profitable enterprises if all options are already exhausted?   Let’s all be aware of this sin called as intellectual cowardice, and avoid it by being open to questions which challenge our beliefs and see the things as they are, not as they are painted to us, let’s  not become so rigid that even sound advice doesn’t bend us.  According to a famous Talmud quote : We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are and I believe people with intellectual  courage challenge notions and perceptions while  people with cowardice become cynical.

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