On ideas and advices

This is my second rambling in what I could call a series of pseudo-technical gibberish. I am kind of perplexed on how I react to peoples' ideas, their views and above all, their advices.

Starting with ideas.. I am now convinced that I dont look at the merit or novelty of the idea as much as I look at the person professing the idea. Many a great ideas have probably fallen on my deaf ears just because i didnt take the person serious enough. At the same time, I have fallen prey to many a marketing tricks of the great wizards when they impose their abyssmal-thoughts-lacking-clarity on me just because somewhere in my head i have a great opinion about them and their ideas. Anything that emanates from their mouth seems to be the next biggest thing, only to be found out later that they were BSing all the time and I had all long turned off that one characteristic that differentiates us from the animals.. reasoning. I think there is always a need to decouple the idea from the person to justfully evaluate it, else we end up judging the person and not the idea. I hope this sinks into me forever.

Now coming to advices.. its the same sad story. I tend to look at the person, not the advice. The first thing which comes to mind, is to rebuff the advice, mentally rationalising that the person giving the advice is no grand pupa standing on a high moral pedestal, and hence lacks the authority to advice my bloated ego. I am not sure how many people I have offended by my reckless behaviour, but if any of those are among the readers of this blog, my deepest apologies are indeed to you. It s an extremely silly act, given why people would advise me in the first place.. probably because they share a care and concern for me. And to rebuff such people amounts to the highest orders of blasphemy, if not absolute stupidity.

All these remind me of an obscure sanskrit verse-"Focus on what is said..not who said it"