Personally, my definition of intellectual is “useless idiot obsessed with sounding smart.” If sounding smart is all that’s important to conservatives, then let’s go with the intellectuals. If you want people who know what they’re talking about and can actually get things done, then let’s shun the intellectuals and make fun of them and call them names and stick “Kick Me” signs on their backs when they aren’t looking. And then punch them while saying, “Shut up, you.”
Unless you’ve actually accomplished something useful, I don’t care what you think.
Amen!
Yes! Let’s round up Frum and Parker and Noonan and George Will and Buckley the Younger and the rest of that posse of p_ssies. We can bait the traps with caviar and a nice chianti. I like the kick me sign idea – but instead of paper and tape I’d opt for a branding iron.
Some people want to think of themselves as smart. Some people are. One time when young I went to a Physics program for high school students at Rensalaer Polytechnic Institute. I was always by far the smartest kid in class in my home town. However at this program there were kids that had dad’s that were PhD’s in electrical engineering AND mommy was a satellite engineer. I never lost so many games of chess in my life. I guess its just best to stay humble. Someone might know something.
Now that you’ve defined intellectualism, you need a definition of accomplishing something useful.
I’ve had various detractors call me an anti-intellectualist on several occasions. Maybe they’re just calling me stupid, I’m not intellectual enough to know.
“…you need a definition of accomplishing something useful.”
Okay…you have a PhD, and have to call me to your house to put a washer in the faucet for you….and I’m 16 years old at the time. I decided I never wanted to be that “smart.”
What would you call someone who is good at doing something? I’ll listen to that expert.
Intellectual: A great, big engine slapped in a car with little skinny tires.
Intellectuals are good at thought experiments – the real world though? Not so much.
I’ve been involved with Mensa nearly 20 years, one of the 300 most intelligent people in the US is one of my best friends, and I’ve won a couple aerospace engineering prizes even though I’ve never studied in that area except as a hobby – my career is elsewhere. Therefore I know of what I speak.
You will encounter a type of “intellectual” who assumes that if you do not agree with liberalism, atheism, or both, you must be retarded, and they must be smarter than you. You can point out that you are more educated, more established in accomplishments, more successful, more respected, more logical, and you can tear every argument they give you to pieces from history, logic, and mathematics off the top of your head and they will not break from this position. What will slowly dawn on you is that they are the very anti-logical creature, the very zealot, the very cultist, that they accuse you of being. They have their neo-gnostic, non-falsifiable, ego-gratifying idol set up in their heads and they will defend that shrine until the foam flecks or fists fly. They must be right – their fellow cultist told them so. Their liberal university graded them harshly and told them they were wrong if they disagreed. Their sacred textbooks told them so, and they cost $150 a pop, so they must be true. The Scientologists use the same psychologial trick – if you pay a lot for something and it’s nonsense, psychologically speaking, it’s less difficult to believe that the nonsense must be true than to accept the fact that you’ve been made a fool of and some con-artist now has your $10,000 tuition plus room and board. And everyone around you is also following the same path – it’s a unique and special environment, the liberal campus. Not unlike Jonestown or Bedlam or Waco – and for exactly the same reason.
Smaller words please. Thx.
I call people who really know stuff Masters of Legitimate Wisdom. Most of them are over 70.
Anyone that identifies themselves as “smart” or an “intellectual” ISNT…… I would put the mind of your average fame against your average “academic” any day of the week.
My definition of “intellectual” usually includes the ability to do math.
I was the “smartest kid in class” until I got bored in high school. I was still smart, just bored. And then I got lazy, cuz everything came so easy. I never had to study. I have NEVER considered myself an intellectual.
I think most intellectuals aren’t really all that smart. They are just so impressed with themselves that they have to let everyone else know how smart they think are. They also have to work a little harder because their IQ is just above average, but not MENSA quality.
Those of us who truly have a higher IQ just think they’re stupid and laugh at them.
I’ll take a President with common sense and a 2nd grade or even self-taught education ANY day, over an Ivy League intellectual. Probably most of us would, judging from the comments so far.
About five years ago I worked on the home of a university professor. One day he walked out the front door and down to the corner. While there he attempted tlight his pipe. The wind would not allow this so he turned away from the wind(the oposite direction that he was originaly headed) He continued on his walk to work (he thought) seven blocks later he turned around and went back past his house on his way to work. Intellectuals are smart???
Always. And you have just demonstrated the difference between intelligence and wisdom. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing” so the saying goes.
What frustrates me about “intellectuals” is the apparent ego stroking that they require just to feel good about themselves. “I’m smarter than you.” “No, I’m smarter than you.”
They sit 16-20+ years at the tree of knowledge and can’t get out of the rain.
Even more outrageous is the fact that the cannot claim credit for their intelligence. They were either blessed with great DNA by God or, for atheists, received it from their birth parents. Either way they had no say in the matter–so there is no room to brag.
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing” so the saying goes.
Actually, it’s “a little learning is a dangerous thing.” It’s from a poem by Alexander Pope. The couplet is:
A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
You can find the whole poem (“An Essay on Criticism”) here:
http://poetry.eserver.org/essay-on-criticism.html
This may seem snarky, but I really don’t intend it to be. I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment, and it wasn’t until recently that I learned what the actual words were myself.
My own definition of an intellectual comes via Tom Wolfe from, I think, a French fellow with whom he was having dinner: an intellectual is an individual with expertise in one area who holds forth only in others.
I don’t think that somebody with a PhD in, say, economics is stupid (I might think that about somebody with a PhD in, say women’s studies). I might think that somebody with a PhD in economics is a fool if he ignores facts, and I certainly don’t think that his opinion on, say, major league baseball is any better than mine. In much the same manner, I do my best (not that I always succeed) not to think that my opinion on, say, literature is better than other people’s just because I’m really knowledgeable about personal financial planning, and I would be a fool if I believed (as many lawyers seem to) that the sun rises in the west just because I’ve constructed a good, logical argument that it does so. When the facts contradict logic, only a fool holds to logic.
I have a very high IQ and laugh at “intellectuals”! They are mental midgets trying to act smart so as to cover up the fact that they are actually retards! They all wear the same clothes, drive the same cars, act goofy in the same fashion. It’s a retard club that they have all figured out. We have too you dill weeds!
I guess I’ve been fortunate enough to have a job where I worked with some of the best educated people in their fields. I enjoyed my job and folks were pretty kind there, but I would love to work with some of the most inventive folks in the world. I just personally think intellect is overrated in our society. You can be as smart and educated as you want to be, but imho people with creative ideas are worth more. There are enormous benefits to not being so bright, like me, I don’t spend much on entertainment, I just look around.
As often happens when a bunch of male intellectuals find themselves in a dark room with a tool in both hands and one realizes he must leave, the group always uses the process of illimination to figure which tool belongs to the unlucky early deperter. The process always fails to get adequate results, but they enjoy the process more than finding a solution. In fact they usually work on problems like this until each is satified he can get his results published and secure a government grant. But hey, it’s not like they are a bunch of lazy jerkoffs. That would be gay.
What frustrates me about “intellectuals” is the apparent ego stroking that they require just to feel good about themselves.
I’m not so much frustrated by them as I pity them, then I move on.
And it’s not just intellectuals. ANYONE that requires their own ego stroking, or trashing someone else, does so only because of their own insecurity. It’s the same reason why schoolyard bullies pick on the perceived weaker kids rather than the ones who can and will kick their butt, or at least fight back.
Whether their own fault or that of an unsupportive upbringing, they know/think they have nothing of their own value, and by their behaviors and attitudes are trying to convince themselves as well as the rest of us that they do.
People who are truly confident in their own beliefs and abilities are just that: quietly so, and usually humble…modest to a fault, rarely tooting their own horn or getting the credit rightfully theirs. Because they have nothing to prove to or be better than anyone but themselves.
I think we have managed to equate learning/intelligence with Wisdom, which is the most dangerous of Fallacies. I have come across so many BS/BA, MS/MA and PhDs in my life who had not a clue as to how to act around people, apply logic in light of solid facts and evidence, or even form the basic constructs of wisdom. Many of the people I have know, whom have only what the have learned through life to back them, can talk and think circles around these useless, so-called intellectuals.
I’ll take the wisdom of years and experience over some lambskin document from some State-sponsored indoctrination center (university) any day of the week. It’s rare to find wisdom and reason amongst the supposed learned in our society.
Kent,
I’m glad you’re on our side.
I remember the first time I read a comment of yours on a post at this site.
I thought, “Hey! This guy’s Smart!”
(As I recall you were metaphorically deboning and making TurDucken out of a troll – It was like watching a master surgeon operate.)
There are a lot of people in the world who are smarter, better educated, and more talented than me.
But If I go more than a few days without being reminded of that, I start getting cocky and end up doing or saying something Really stupid.
Coming here helps keep me humble – and sometimes I even learn something!