[Blank] and Effect

Lately I've been thinking about a piece I wrote in the past, where I expressed my annoyance at people who perceive mental activity as equivalent to being idle, and identified that at root it reveals that such people view the mind as irrelevant to existence. Luckily I do not deal with such persons anymore, but I still feel an incredible contempt for such people given what deplorable and self-destructive behaviors such a belief leads to, and lately I've made a deeper realization about this mentality.

While these people may recognize desirable effects such as intelligence, they think anti-causally and evade the proper facts that would give rise to the effects they desire, even going so far as to undermine those causes while they yearn for the effects at the same time. This dawned on me when I thought about my experience with that person in the above linked article and remembered that in the future from that date they have implicitly complimented and shown great appreciation for my intelligence. They give me baffled looks when I tell them I'm studying by my own accord, call my activities "just" reading, and freely interrupt me as if I weren't engaged in anything important, and then they show appreciation for what intellect I have developed? It's the studying and reading that have given rise to my mental powers, so to insult my means while complimenting the consequence is doubly insulting. Imagine if someone spoke contemptuously of your weight lifting routine and then later admired fawningly your muscle size and strength.

It goes the other way too, where such a person will seek out what they view to be as practical causes and evade what effects they lead to. Here they are at the very least taking action towards desired ends, but since they ignore what consequences are occurring while they're employing the means the goal remains out of reach. I've seen people boast about their healthy diet while having decaying teeth, multiple medical conditions, and obesity, and still others claim that being with a particular person makes them happy when there's decades of evidence towards the opposite being true. They're destroying themselves and ruining their chance at happiness, yet they believe they're employing the practical means to health and loving relationships.

I'm fairly sure that this is a consistent mentality that runs both roads in all persons who adopt this mindset, though not certain. Nonetheless, they are terrible people to deal with, for they treat effects as things that have magically come into existence and act like ships heading towards icebergs in their habits.

As for me, I'm going to keep my eye on reality. Persons in the past -- and maybe even ones yet to be met -- may think it's a frivolous endeavor to study and do academic reading without the guidance of an educational institute, but I can observe for myself that this endeavor has led to me becoming an overall better and more competent person. So I will not stop.