Cicero's 'Nature Of The Gods'

The statement that “the authority of those who set out to teach is often an impediment to those who wish to learn” strikes me as a particularly sobering maxim that I wish I had known earlier in my life. In the Nature of the Gods, Cicero made this comment with the intent of stressing the importance of independent reasoning in the realm of philosophical thinking. He implored the reader to safeguard their ability to think and judge independently, and warned them against subordinating their reasoning to the popular or authoritative opinion that happened to prevail at the time. Today, 2000 years after Cicero’s time, having an independent and critical mind has long been firmly established as an indispensable quality for anyone engaged in serious
To insist upon that originality, however meager the fruit that comes out of it may be, is more important to my personal development than whether this independent thinking process has yielded a correct conclusion or not on a specific occasion. A natural result of this insistence upon originality is that people are encouraged to explore the unknown and question what is presumably known without fear of contradicting the authority or being persecuted for being a non-conformist. Hence, I take Cicero’s as an endorsement on the value of maintaining an active and critical mind, and the advantage of exploration and discovery over
In this paragraph, I would like to offer a second, slightly extended interpretation. It arises from some cultural shocks I have experienced since I came to Colgate last fall. It is a curious experience living in a culture entirely different from the one I was raised up in, and to see how the norms and criteria I have taken for granted for my whole life are challenged. One of these cultural shocks includes a rather amusing encounter with mild racism. I ran into a friend in Frank the other day, and after we hugged each other, she half-jokingly remarked that I gave bad hugs because I was not white. It was a rather puzzling comment since the real reason I give bad hugs is because people never hug each other in China, and I am a slow learner to pick up such an intimate gesture of friendship. Another cultural shock is how American culture values extroversion over introversion. Some articles and books I have read indicate that introversion is viewed in the U.S. as a setback in school as well as workplaces. It seems like introversion is even stigmatized in the form of being pathologized as various personality disorders. It is easy to imagine how, had I grown up in the U.S. my entire life, I might really be convinced that the reason I was unable to give good hugs was because I was not white, or that my introversion was not a temperament but an