[QUOTE=mgftp;1655834133]I'd you ask my wife I am the best at being condescending and judgemental. You may have more of a desire to "be better" than I do. And I admire that.[/QUOTE]
I had lunch with a friend yesterday who is a musician. One of the best I know. He made a comment that he always feels like he's playing catch up on knowledge and basically doesn't feel very smart at times. He's a bright guy and as we were talking I thought of this thread and realized why I try not to be condescending and why none of us should feel that way.
If the sum total of information in the universe is say, infinity minus 1, and the total of human knowledge is a googolplex of data points of a certain size, then what's the big deal if one of us knows a few thousand more data points than another human being? In the greater scheme of the universe, does it matter if our intellectual power is a few orders of magnitude greater than a goldfish? It's still trivial and insignificant. So if we aren't much greater than a pet fish, we can't be significantly greater another human being.
Not saying we shouldn't be proud of our accomplishments or stop trying to grow, but thinking about it that way, being condescending doesn't feel right. We can't even comprehend how tiny we are in the greater scheme of things because it's too scary to imagine and acting superior to someone else won't change that. I figure it will just look foolish to anyone whose understanding compared to ours, is similar or greater than what ours is compared a goldfish.
Also, it's possible those goldfish are secretly controlling us or know more than we think, or maybe it's the mice! Hmmph, I've gotta go find my aluminum foil hat now.