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Thinking of others as sheep by foxboyprower
Something I've noticed about myself is the tendency to perceive myself as intellectually superior to a large number of people I meet. This might be common or some people might have this quality more than others. It's really noticeable when people ask me what music I like. I think about how I prefer being alone with my thoughts than have them drowned out with music. Seeing how popular listening to music is, I get the impression that a lot of people are thinking less than I am. I know this isn't true. The (somewhat poor) excuse I have for this tendency is being immersed in a society that seems to have a fixation with what I consider to be shallow and meaningless material. Most conversations I hear are people talking about other local people and events. As understandable as it is, it baffles me that it takes up such a large majority of conversations I overhear. I see conversations as opportunities to share, discuss, and form ideas as well as inform one another. What I observe tends to be mostly gossip. This may be observer bias. Sometimes I feel like everyone secretly thinks "deep thoughts" like I do to a certain extent, but most of the time everyone else appear to be herds of simple sheep to me. I know this is entirely untrue. I hear other people sharing thoughts that are very similar if not exactly the same as mine. One such individual is found here. https://www.youtube.com/user/AgentXPQ
I wonder how shallow people actually are in comparison to how shallow my perception of them is.
Thinking of others as sheep
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I do listen to music when I'm seriously studying. It helps silence a lot of distracting thoughts.
That's a good point.
Yeah, gossip just really bores me. I like conversations to be thoughtful and stimulating. Also I just used "deep thoughts" because I couldn't think of another term for them.
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neesboy
Hmm. I find that I mostly listen to music when I /am/ thinking. Working on coding, coming up with characters or writing for them, and so on. Music without lyrics is especially useful for this, since it's less distracting. But really, any music you listen to regularly stops drowning out thoughts pretty quickly. It's a little self-reinforcing, really- if you don't listen to music because it distracts you, it will continue to distract you because you're not acclimated. But it might be useful to note that for people who do it regularly, it can actually help them formulate more creative thoughts.
As for what you overhear, I'd go with a mix of accurate, observer bias, and self-selection. Conversations you overhear are less likely to be meaningful ones, given the fact that they're been carried out where you can hear them. You can also consider what people probably overhear you talking about. If they don't overhear anything, that either means you're discussing things more privately (self-selection) or you're not communicating much, in which case it's a matter of priorities. They place more value on the interaction itself (enjoyment derived, friends made) than on the content of the discussion, which is reasonable enough.
I do occasionally have these sort of thoughts about particular conversations I hear, but I'm sure that they would consider much of what I discuss (characters, D&D, the relation of powers of infinity to dimensions, etc.) to be equally trivial or even antisocial. Finally, when I consider what the majority of my "deep thoughts" (if I may call them such) have done for me, it's generally been about the same as any other topic of conversation- enjoyment and making friends.