Daniel Dennett. The Wisdom of being Affable

A few weeks ago, I attended a couple of side-events to the World Economic Forum. The WEF is well known as being one of the world’s most intense collections of the super-arrogant.

But sometimes one can be super-surprised: Standing in the corner of one of the rooms at the Belvedere Hotel I found Daniel Dennett — with his walking stick.

He was the antithesis of arrogance — he was happy to engage me in a conversation about religion and atheism. Most intereresting to me is that he did that in spite of my obvious lack of knowledge and reading. He treated me as a human, and I could tell that he did not take my ignorance as a conversation stopper — or as a reason to turn away from me and start talking to someone else — more erudite, better read or more powerful.

As you can tell, he made a lasting impression — so much so that I wanted to write it up here. He set a gold standard for being affable and for treating all humans the same — whether they are right, intelligent and powerful — or not.

If you are not familiar with Daniel and his work, there was a great write-up in the New Yorker