Subject: Re: eggheads
From: jason varsoke (jjv@swl.msd.ray.com)
Date: Thu Apr 20 2000 - 11:13:43 EDT
Before the turn of the centry (no not the one that might have just
happened) intellectuals were simply people of a community (often a
village) who were scene as wise. They weren't particularly educated, but
people used to go to them for advice. I wonder if this definition is
useful in deciding whether to apply the label to yourself or not. (And
no, I'm not sure how this differs from the tribal medicine man/woman, or
the oracle of delphi).
In the `10s-50s it seems intellectual still holds that meaning. It was
a person people went to (either in the literary form, or otherwise) for
vision. And I think I'd characterize authors by whether they had a vision
or not when branding them intellectual or not. For example, Dostoyevski
is certainly an intellectual; his books have meat. But I'm not so sure
about Tolstoy (great writer, not much meat). And this follows in the
political arena. W.E.B. Dubois is certainly and intellectual. Booker T.
Washington is not. The difference? Dubois and Washington both had a
vision. But Dubois took a more rational approach. He wrote essays,
spoke, and discussed his vision. Washington was a demagogue.
Perhaps, though, we'd like to define intellectuals as anyone who likes
to think. Certainly there is a great chasim in the population between
those who like to think and those who don't. The latter being below the
iceberg's water line. And there is something to be said by people who
spend their lunchtime discussing how many angels can dance on a pinhead.
But are these people intellectuals? And if not, what are they? Has
intellectual simply come to mean anyone who enjoys using their brain,
rather than eschewing the oppertunity?
One of the great problems with the term is the perception that
intellectuals are in the white tower and nothing from the white tower
applies to the grease monkey who just lost his job to foreign labor. For
all the intellectual mastrabation that went about in the first half of the
century we haven't come that far. And that bad taste in hoi poloi's mouth
is probably from disgusting things like existentialism, which did nothing
but depress anyone who touched it and didn't spend the time to grok it.
In the micro-societies that exist in our American public educational
system the intellectual is the pariah. 'Nerd persecution' is hardly an
absurd idea. I'm surprised the supreme court hasn't legislated them into
being a protected class. I'm surprised nerdism isn't a term like racism,
and anti-semitism. And maybe the only reason it isn't was the chant
my athletically poor university used to use when our rival Jock-U trounced
us in basketball: "That's all right, that's o.k. You'll all work for us
one day." And maybe this was before the formation of the white collar
sweatshops called "software development," which seems to suck so many of
us up.
It's my belief that intellectual is something you earn. It's something
other people call you. It's never something you can lable yourself with.
If you're guilty of that, you're a pseudo-intellectual (whatever that
means). And you aren't guilty of anything, but unauthorized
self-promotion.
the grand pooh-bah of pseudo-intellectuals,
-jason
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Mon May 01 2000 - 06:20:13 EDT