In this series of posts, I’m putting two ideas together—the idea that smart, creative, sensitive individuals are confronted by special challenges and the idea that journaling is a valuable self-help tool—and turning them into a set of journaling prompts designed to lead you on a personal journey of discovery.
I hope that you enjoy these prompts. Here are five more challenges, and four journal prompts to go with each challenge. Engaging with any one of them may well serve you. I hope you find these valuable! And I hope you’ll take a look at Why Smart People Hurt and at my latest journal, Affirmations for Self-Love.
A smart person, both historically and in our present times, is likely surrounded by anti-intellectualism and by people who despise artists and intellectuals. She may encounter this antipathy in her own family, in her social or religious group, in her workplace, and more generally in mass culture and society at large.
- The challenge of family antipathy to thinking and to creative and intellectual pursuits. Because of the ways that very human emotions like jealousy and envy play themselves out, and because people are taught by their religions and the apparatus of culture to follow and not to think for themselves, a large segment of the population is antipathetic toward smart people—including mothers and fathers toward their own children and siblings toward their sisters and brothers.
+ Was your family environment antipathetic to thinking and derisive of people who did a lot of thinking?
+ Was this antipathy aimed directly at you?
+ What were the consequences of this for you in childhood?
+ What have been the lifelong consequences of this derision and antipathy?
2. The challenge of religious or social opposition to thinking and to creative and intellectual pursuits. Religions announce, “I am the right way and the only way and follow what I say.” They do not want members of their flock to think for themselves. They are therefore naturally and consistently aligned with other autocrats, like dictatorial politicians and bullying parents, and opposed to freethinkers.
+ Did you grow up in a religion that demanded allegiance and rejected freethinking?
+ Did you passively and tacitly go along with the rules and dogmas of that religion? If so, what were the consequences of that passivity?
+ If you rebelled and broke with your religion or social group, what were the childhood consequences of that rebellion?
+ What are the ongoing consequences of that rupture and rebellion?
3. The challenge of workplace antipathy to smartness. For example, your boss may angrily reject your suggestions for doing something in a better, smarter way because he doesn’t want to upset the apple cart. A workplace may pay lip service to an idea like innovation, but, in reality, only concern itself with the bottom line and the status quo.
+ Have you found yourself in workplaces that were antipathetic to smartness?
+ What were the consequences for you of having to work in such an environment?
+ Do you currently find yourself in a workplace that is antipathetic to smartness?
+ How is that antipathy affecting your performance and your job satisfaction?
4. The challenge of living embedded in an anti-intellectual mass culture. Mass culture always panders to the masses—that’s why it’s called mass culture. If the masses want their movies to come with a happy ending, their movies will come with a happy ending. No movie director wanting his career to continue would dare orchestrate a certain $200,000,000 flop by opting for an unsatisfactory, true-to-life ending. Mass culture is regularly, if not always, anti-intellectual.
+ What do you see as the consequences for you personally of mass culture—of the advertisements you’re bombarded by, by the programs television provides you with, by the movies that Hollywood makes, etc.?
+ What do you see as the consequences of mass culture on the people around you and the people with whom you interact?
+ Are you yourself obliged to play the mass culture game by virtue of the work you do, say as a screenwriter, actor, social influencer, publicist, or freelance writer?
+ If you wanted to reduce the influence of mass culture in your life, what might you do or change?
5. The challenge of living in a society that feels threatened by, and despises, its artists and intellectuals. It is a hallmark of fascism, and of the conservative and authoritarian forces in every society, to target its artists and intellectuals, as those are the people most likely to speak out against oppression and injustice and rebel against totalitarianism.
+ In what sense or senses do you experience your society as against you?
+ Have there been concrete instances of this antipathy?
+ What have been the personal consequences, if any, of this antipathy?
+ Do you think that there might be another society that suits you better? If so, do you have any thoughts about switching or any plans for switching?
More to come! Enjoy!
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
