I come from a family with fairly rural roots. My parents were the only ones among their siblings to pursue college, and they raised me with an immense appreciation for education and the opportunities it brings. I currently hold a Masters degree in engineering and would like to pursue Law or an MBA in the future. My academic experience and qualifications are a significant part of who I am as an adult. As I continue to grow, I’ve noticed that it becomes harder to connect with some loved ones who are less educated and ultimately less adept at thinking critically and having discussions. I find that ideas, that to me are obvious, sometimes require significant effort from others to appreciate the full depth. Furthermore, I have also found that on average people are not interested in connecting with one another as deeply as I’m interested. For example, if I ask a question, I truly want to know the answer, I’m not just queuing up my own thoughts as response. I always try to be poetic and gracious when explaining these feelings because I’d imagine this would be received better than saying “I think people are dumb and hard to connect with”, but that’s how I feel a lot of times in plain English. I am interested in learning better ways to maintain relationships with people I may have these feelings my about.
Are you from a South Asian country like me?
Hard lesson is you don't. It is nor because you are better educated than them. It is because of the mismatch of how you view this world.
Education under capitalism create weird notions like these, where one feel they are better because they got educated. As some other commenter said, everyone is stupid. You have some knowledge in a certain domain, and you process the world in that framework. The 'less educated' people have knowledge in some other domain. Even knowing how to work underthe scorching sun and keep yourself healthy itself is a knowledge that is hard to achieve. Maintaining your physical health and being able to do physical labour everyday, is something we the educated can only dream of.
The key point is there are more things out there than you know. Also the ratio is so skewed that what is know is miniscule compared to what you don't know.
If you are doubting the fact that you can learn new things from anyone out there, then you are in a wrong path. Keep the curiosity up and acknowledge and accept the differences among people. This is critical to have a nurturing world view.