The hoi polloi versus Russell and Wittgenstein

Don't beat up on yourself. The beauty of being alive is that there are always possibilities and hopes. 

We have to forgive ourselves again and again, otherwise we will be consumed by regrets. 

The fault is not all yours. I project myself not too much in a positive light. So people don't take me seriously and think I am a just stupid fool and they get stuck up on themselves. They fail to understand the message when I keep harping on the fact that I am a philosopher. They stupidly think I am just bragging. To be a real philosopher is to be exposed to the thinking of very bright minds and thus the thought process and tastes of the hoi polloi are really beneath me because I am used to very high standards. What I am trying to get when dealing with the hoi polloi is not so much their brains---which are not much to speak of---as their hearts. But alas, usually they don't much in that area either. Harriet had a lot of heart.

But let's not talk about the hoi polloi anymore. I don't want to throw up all over the Internet. Let's talk about bright minds and see how they dealed with truths. 

Wittgenstein was an engineer, studying aeronautical engineering, somewhere in England. He somehow got interested in philosophy, especially logic after reading Frege. So he went to study under Bertrand Russell, the worldwide authority on math and logic and had written, in co-operation with Whitehead, a landmark book on the relationship between math and logic. After two years, Russelll admitted that he had nothing further to teach his genius pupil who now convinced Russell that the essential thinking Russell had about philosophy on math and logic was no longer sound and it was now up to the pupil to take over the torch. Wiitgenstein went on and published only one book and one essay, but they shook up the intellectual world. After his death, several books were published, one of which called Philosophical Investigations. This book repudiated much the thesis of his first book. And the world hailed him, once more a genius. In fact, Wittgenstein was the only philosopher in history that the word "genius" was regularly attached. And it was used by fellow philosophers and mathematicians and logicians of first rank. To his credit, although Wittgenstein was regularly rude and domineering in philosophical discussions with his peers, and although he wrote disparagingly of his former teacher in his letters to his friends, one time Russell showed up in a discussion, and Wittgenstein deferred to him in a manner that he had shown to nobody else. 

Russell was a famous aristocrat, mathematician, philosopher, and writer (he won a Nobel Prize in Literature), but had a humility to see that his pupil possessed a mind superior to his with regard to mathematical philosophy. That was how great minds usually behave. Truths come before their own egos whereas the stupid and the ignorant hoi polloi protect their fragile and puny egos at all costs against truths. These poor animals fear truths, especially truths about themselves because these truths will make them feel much worse about themselves. So they run away from truths and put their heads up their asses for so long that the shit there penetrate into their skulls with a result that now all they have is shit in their brains. All the words come out of their mouths stink of ignorance and nonsense. 

Thus spoke Wissai, the Ferryman