“What are you doing here?”
That’s a phrase I’ve heard a lot. Most recently it was at Gigantour, as someone observed that a clean-cut geek like myself doesn’t fit the mold of typical metal fan. The observation, though slightly rude, wasn’t exactly news to me. The instance when I was most surprised to hear it happened when I was in grade 10, lined up to receive a bronze medal for my grades. The first place grade 11 student, who was someone I was acquainted with, leaned over and wondered aloud what I was doing there. The truth is though, despite being de facto one of them I never did really fit in with the “high grades” crowd either. I just happen to be that guy who was able to do well without really appearing to have tried. You’ve probably met someone like me.
For the purpose of this argument I’m going to class intelligence into three very broad categories:
1. TRADITION – The least intellectually curious group tends to believe adhering to tradition is the surest path to success. This group has millions of years of evolution behind them backing them up, whether they choose to believe that or not. Skills, values and ideas handed down from older generations have intrinsic value because they’ve been tested.
2. MONEY – The more educated group has observed that money is correlated with power. Their political ideas tend to involve fixing the world by redistributing wealth. They tend to ignore lessons from the past, and focus on their ideas being philosophically correct rather than practical or workable.
3. FREEDOM – This group tends to view freedom as paramount. The freedom to pursue one’s own goals within reasonable, well-defined limits are all that is necessary to allow everyone equal opportunity at success.
In summary, I tend to get annoyed by intellectuals because their ideas are less grounded in reality than even actual racist, homophobic cavemen who desperately cling to their guns (or whatever they’re doing today). If you’re in the 2% of the population whose intelligence I didn’t just insult, I hope you found this post amusing and/or enlightening.
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