Twitter holds the opportunity of sharing great ideas, assuming of course that great ideas actually exist. Sadly in a culture that has as its principle value to not discriminate between ideas, the studies of virtue or great art become silly notions. Whatever anyone thinks is certainly as good as what anyone else thinks; and of course you mustn’t argue my point if you happen to disagree because that would be so unkind of you. Civility uber alles after all.
If discrimination is not allowed then there is no difference between the quality of the Mona Lisa and something I might paint this afternoon. Great art and great literature, therefore, do not exist and so it is a waste of time pursuing the silly idea that they might.
Because there is nothing in the content of one thing over another, why read? At least, why read anything that is long or hard to understand? Thanks to the Internet we now have the opportunity to get around critically analyzing things for ourselves. Instead we can google the opinions of others about that content. This allows us to focus on improving our Angry Bird score. Let the majority (those with the most Twitter followers) rule. That seems fair, doesn’t it? Even Congress is comfortable voting on legislation it does not read. They seem to prefer looking at poll data when formulating opinions rather than deeply thinking about things for themselves. Why should we struggle through War and Peace? Let’s just admit that the less reading is taught and required in school the happier everyone will be.
Unfortunately I have this niggling problem.
To be honest with you, even when I think about my own thoughts, I find that they are not all of the same quality. The attempt to not discriminate between ideas in this world turns out to be a completely irrational thought; one only able to be sustained by people with advanced academic degrees. Thinking, it turns out – when you really think about it – is the work of discrimination, and the hardest thinking, to my mind, has to be attempting to make this obvious truth not so.
So what do I do with Twitter?
I have concluded that for me to gain anything useful from Twitter, I need to find people who present good thoughts, ideas and content. If I can do this, then Twitter may serve a tremendous purpose of drawing people together around really good ideas.
So what do you think about Twitter? (Please don’t voice an opinion if you don’t Tweet yourself. That would be so easy to do and my post here is about studying things yourself from their original sources).
Any tips about how to use Twitter to expand your thinking?
Name one person you follow on Twitter who really stretches you to think more deeply.