Quote:
Carl Rylander wrote:
Also, I would say, as Aikidoka, you should minimise your contact with people you have little in common with, and maximise it with people you have a lot in common with. You can get people who you have a only a tiny tiny bit in common with, and they con you into thinking they have a lot...
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As a blanket statement, i think I have to disagree, though I suppose it depends on what a person is trying to accomplish. You can have contact with people who have a lot in common with you and still get conned by them...in fact I'd say it's generally easier to get conned by those folks. When I'm around folks I don't know very well or otherwise feel I have little in common with, I'm generally on my game a lot more than when I'm around people who seem very familiar (i.e. my critical thinking goes way up). Also, i hold a diversity of experiences as being hugely important and I can't learn as well from that by hanging out with people similar to myself.
I use vision as an analogy: you can sense depth with one eye, but two eyes gives a far greater sense of depth. Add another set and some good communication ability and suddenly you can triangulate something far more profound than those initial 2D and 3D images.