Well, let me put it this way.
I've known a lot of "smart" people that are total dumbfucks, for lack of a better word.
I know many more people who are far smarter than those "smart" ones could ever wish to be, and are drop-outs.
The "smart" ones are labelled as such because they did as they were told in school, the rest asked the most important question a person can ask: "But why?" That's the sign of someone who is truly inquisitive.
But mainly, all of these people that I know who are intelligent drop-outs are of a more philosophical/spiritual bent, but that's the thing, those words don't come into play, they're too busy getting on with just BEing.
For the most part I've found intellectual pursuits to be incredible de-humanizing. Science, for instance, has come to the point where people spout the same monologue about how human emotions are simply a series of complex chemical reactions, balances and imbalances, which to me, is a horrible idea. I believe we are more than that.
Also I find that science in particular has lead to many of this generation converting to Atheism. Now I'm saying nothing good or bad about Atheism itself, since fundamentally, it's just the lack of theism, thus the a- prefix, but how it pans out is a lot of people talking about how we are insignificant space dust drifting around on a rock, and that we are going to die and that our actions here are meaningless, and then they shove that viewpoint in everyone else's faces and bash the religious folk and tell them they're "wrong" (when of course, objectivity is nigh on useless, being a race of beings that percieves relatively.)
This strikes me as pretty destructive, only serves to create more voids between PEOPLE and other PEOPLE.
As for myself, I was once a hardcore, militant Atheist.
Over the past year or so I have started getting into Numerology, Astrology, Astronomy, and began noticing syncronicities on an incredibly minute level to the point where I am utterly convinced that everything is in a state of absolute and complete perfection and that everything happens for a reason, that our paths are laid out before us, yet we still have free will, chaos and order coming into a state of harmony where they are one and the same.
I also believe in some form of re-incarnation, not that I ever really use that word, it has connotations to world religions and belief systems which may not be inherently bad themselves, but I don't want my opinions and views being misconstrued as something taken from another belief system, as that isn't the case, so I tend to say "we've been here before."
And the wonderful thing is, nobody can say "that doesn't exist." Because, hey, I percieve it, thus, it is real to me.
And guess what, I have so much love and empathy for people of all shapes, sizes, colours, creeds, races, religions, sexes and sexualities and all that other tosh that we talk about to differentiate from one another when instead we should be focusing on how incredibly alike we all are.
Peace <3
