Believing in Nothing"

My 91 year old cousin has just died. She was an atheist all her life and had an extremely successful, fulfilled and enjoyable life. Her most recent (academic) book will be published soon. I don't think religious belief is any protection against depression or academic interests any detriment to the enjoyment of life or having a wide variety of interests.

You are all making intellectual studies sound mean, narrow and spiritually diminishing and I think that is absolutely wrong. I am part of a family that are academically bright and embrace academic study with delight and find it spiritiually uplifting and that it brings joy and pleasure into our lives.

Our family of four can round up one PhD, 5 Masters degrees, and 5 first degrees. Four of those degrees were studied in later life as a result of the pleasure got from a leisure pursuit and a desire to understand the subject more. Our family also includes one morris dancer, one opera singer/producer, an actor, a long distance swimmer, and gifted needlewoman.

Academic attainment does not preclude an enjoyment of the arts and sports nor does it necessarily make you narrow minded blinkered, anymore than anyone less academically gifted. My experience has been that distribution of spiritual angst/depression/ bi-polar and other mental problems is unrelated to intellect. You are as likely to be intellectually challenged and depressed as you are to be intellectually gifted.

I am sad for wot and others that family members are so troubled, but it is unlikely that it is caused by their academic attainments or attributes.

Look up Richard Simmons on youtube, he will make you shake it out and have a good laugh too. He is very hyper though.

You are so right Lucky. I was watching a talk from TED talks on youtube and the guy was saying how it is encouraged from an early age to be good at maths and literature, language, science but not encouraged is the arts, music, dance, art, etc, that is always low down on the order of academic priority. But, he said, it is natural for us as children to sing and dance and we are channelled into not doing it as we grow into secondary school. Who doesn't feel better after a good sing song or a boogie? We should dance and sing every day. I do think that school and then college and university narrows as it goes along until everything is taken away apart from the subject studied. It can't be good for the mind and body to do this. Only a part of the brain is being used and not the whole body. Universities and colleges should have dance sessions or loosening up sessions before classes and at breaks, maybe the end of a lecture, five minutes to shake it all out. We do need doctors and lawyers but everything needs a degree these days so they become less powerful than they used to be and so a higher degree is needed to stand out, more study, more stress, less shaking it about.

Wot Is your brother married, does he have children or DGC? What job does he have? I am sure that you let him believe what he wants about love or spiritualism but to be depressed is a different matter. Does he go to any sport activity or dance or in a choir or karaoke? It is great to be brainy, smart, clever, my DS is, but he is the same, he needs to loosen the limbs a bit, but try and tell him and I might as well be Shirley Valentine talking to the wall!

Disillusioning people of what though, wot?

Darwin's got a lot to answer for.disallusioning people.

I meant he got his intellectual ability from my dad.

Yes, he has been diagnosed as bio polar, same as my mum and sister. He got his intellectual freedom m my dad but my dad managed to stay very stable. Its very sad what my brothers been through....many several fortunes and local st them all. He's so lucky his family have stuck by him. He's even auto Darwin in his vibered conversation tonight. Well, I prefer to delude myself!

Some very clever people are very sad people, which is one of the reasons I hate to see children pushed into thinking that academia and a uni education are the main goal in life.

I know a lot of very very intelligent people who could not be described as happy; and who would have loved to work with their hands and follow a completely different career. If you are bright you get channeled down a narrow route.

I am not religious, but I do believe in love and kindness.

Does your brother need to see his doc.