[Timo]

Desu, i hope you don't take this the wrong way, but i'm not sure what the right way is to conveigh to you that you are voluntarily excluding yourself from almost all of the good that this world has to offer. Disdain for others only places you in isolation, which only begets further disdain and misery. You honestly sound beyond the point of misery. As a first step to helping and feeling better about yourself, try to find somewhere inside of you a brief hint of humility. There is an awful lot of thoughtfullness in what you've written here at PO over the past several months. There's also an awful lot of a holier than thou attitude that saturates some of your posts. Assuming the position of holier than thou does not earn you respect from others, which puts you on the same level as the people you despise so much. Your choice. You can be humble with respect to the world around you, and still maintain your critical thinking abilities, and use those abilities to try to educate those around you, or you can simply give up and live a miserable life. Your choice.

[Pops]

It takes no intelligence or skill whatsoever to assert "I'm smart, everyone else is stupid." That isn't critical, or thinking, that's just egotism. Could be there is actually some kind of inverse relationship; the smarter my ego thinks I am, the less likely it's right.

Critical thinking has an aspect of critique but it seems to me the essence should first be the critique of one's own conclusions. How can a person judge the ideas of others against reality when they have not judged their own?

I'd mention my gifts but this thread is obviously about the OP's ego, not mine.