“I’ve seen an Agent punch through a concrete wall. Men have emptied entire clips at them and hit nothing but air. Yet their strength and their speed are still based on a world that is built by rules”, said Morpheus, and I would add: different from your readiness, your sensitivity, distinctive traits of a creature of habits.
While I’m on the subject of rules and habits: if you want children to develop intelligence, gently expose them to changes in habit, for habits are the foundation of our stubborness. This has to be done in a sensible way. Too fast, too broadly, or too deeply, and they will disconnect. Too slow, etc., and they’ll accomodate. There is good lazyness, and bad lazyness. The former has to do with tenacity and resilience, with the wisdom of movement without effort, the latter with the lack of options of the stubborn.
On the other hand, if you want children to develop sensitivity, gently expose them to variations on the rules they perceive as valid. Again, skillfully: belief and disbelief are different substances, and their appropriate dosage is ad hoc. At some point the question “why did the rules change?” will come afloat, and the answer must not be defensive. The fact that there are so many valid rules is rooted on the premise that all rules are subject to change. That may sound paradoxical, but really isn’t. That’s just the point where sensitivity kicks in. The volatile nature of rules is the source of their own strength (dýnamis), and nurtures the amazement we are able to feel as living creatures.
Before that, it is useless to expose children to canonic art and science, where intelligence and sensitivity are already frozen, inert. Unless you want them to work as a vaccine…
So intelligence is not the same as skill, and sensitivity is not the same as good manners. We all need both, and in some balance. They may follow a different pattern of development in boys and girls, but not for the reason you may think, namely, because one would be more becoming, more natural in men, and the other in women. In fact, the exact opposite is probably the case. How could we be so deeply mistaken about this, and for so long? Because a perfect world, made of specialists, was once our dream.
As we now know, that would be a world with no future.
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