The Statue of Slavery

Our minds make representations of ourselves. These representations can be hijacked by defense mechanisms that protect us from facing our flaws, imperfections, and "personality pimples". When this happens, our self-images flatter us. We don't take into account the total sum of our personality acne and pimpled humanness. Only the things that reinforce the shine of our self-flattering representations. And we try to arrange circumstances to reinforce those glossy marble statues of ourselves.

The problem is that marble statues are fragile. When more or less "harmless" words or actions from others accidentally tip them over, they smash into a million pieces. But a flawed, imperfect, personality-pimpled human will not, and will stay intact.

The Stupid Thinking god

Intellectual pride can lead to stupidity. When someone idolizes their own thinking structures and glorifies them by making them equal to that of a “thinking god”, those thinking structures harden into statue marble. Those idolized thinking structures are persuaded that their thoughts - thoughts of a “thinking god” - can never be wrong, because a “thinking god” never has thinking errors. And when one cannot admit that one has thinking errors, one can never change. And not being able to change one's errors in thinking is the very definition of stupidity.

Here, intellectual pride trades a thinking posture that is open to correction with its “mental pimples” and “cognitive freckles” for a beautifully dead static thinking posture that is no longer alive.