A Bradburyan Nighmare: The Shunning of Intellect

Webster 1913, Google and dictionary.com agree that brasier is an acceptable variation.

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I agree, but I wasn't talking about WWII, I was talking about the Nazi regime.

That's my very point. No matter how civilized you are, you're still a human being and you're just as capable of doing evil things as a Cro-Magnon.

 

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The Gend:

[deleted]; whether I [deleted] need to respond to the wine quote is not clear to me, particularly since Leo seems to have jumped out in front of both insults.

Leo does make a valid point when he states that the difference here is probably due to the degree of membership - who would revile something that everybody does? (Apart from picking your nose &c). Watching "Friends" could hardly be a dirty secret.

Freud, on the other hand, is a bad choice if you want to "fit in"... whether or not you're a nerd. The general public will think you're a know-it-all and many educated people will have problems with your personal interpretations of the Sigmeister, since Freud's works changed significantly over his lifetime.
(Some of Freud's best known work, the Id/Ego/Superego analogy for the internal function of the brain, was written by him during the last few years of his life. Freud did not consider this model of the brain to be an adequate description, but apparently everyone else does.)
Now, I shouldn't call Freud out too badly, because these days he's quite popular - most people know about that Id/Ego/Superego thing, which is too bad, because I think the theory is terrible.

That's what makes me a nerd... see? Even when the general public embraces Freud, my response is:

"Damn, you guys can't get anything right. Look, anyone can come up with a theory of mind like that... I could make one up in my sleep. How about this: the mind is made up of sensations. Knowledge is like a string that connects sensations, so any piece of information that you learn is represented by these connections. As a web of knowledge builds in your mind, the interconnecting strings begin to relate one thing to another, by sympathetic vibrations. Our consciousness, the active part of our brain, is like the spider, both in that it makes the initial connections and in that it senses those vibrations that pass through the web as we see, hear, and otherwise sense our world.
There's the BigBlueHead's model of the mind. So, am I cool now? Huh?"

And I guarantee that everyone will think it's garbage, even though the Id/Ego/Superego model is no more fruitful or informative a theory. And when it comes right down to it, the difference will be that Freud is famous and I'm not.

This is what I sometimes call the argument from "He's rich and you're not", or in Latin, Argumentum ad Alex Lifeson in honor of the Rush fans who so often use this technique:

Rush Fan: Alex Lifeson is the best guitarist in the world.
Other Person: No he is not.
RF: Well, he's rich and you aren't, so your opinion doesn't count for anything.

(This is not to be confused with Argumentum ad Jimmy Page.)

In effect, studying Nietzsche is like voting for the Green Party; people consider you to be "backing a loser" because no one else reads Nietzsche. Why watch Shakespeare when you could watch Tennessee Williams and tell your friends about it? Why read the TLP when you could be reading the John Lennon commemorative edition of The Catcher in the Rye?

Since the most important part of your life is apparently supposed to be the Friends-like banter that you engage in with your own friends, taking in "A Streetcar Named Desire" is not something you do for its own sake, but rather to be able to share it with your friends in shallow small talk as you hang around and smoke in front of the 7-11. So, why would you want to read or watch or otherwise experience anything that your friends wouldn't be able to immediately identify with?

This isn't really a cultural problem per se, it's a combination of two factors. The first is the overinflation of the value of group membership, and the second is intellectual laziness. These are both, I hope, passing things... the membership one seems to be pretty strong, but as education becomes more widespread it may weaken.

So, it seems to me as Rosa said, people are not disgusted by your "smaats", but rather by your failure to seek membership and try to support it with your reading/watching habits. The more arcane and peculiar your favourite subject is, the more of a slap in the face it is to your "friends" who don't want to have to learn anything.

That's why the Star Trek fanatics don't occupy the same circle of hell as other nerds - there's so darn many of them that people will believe that they have membership of their own.

I hope that addresses the Friends/Freud issue. If you directed the wine quote at me, tell me and I'll try to answer that one too.

 

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Rosa: I occasionally wondered if there was any relation between the rivalry between Cain and Abel, and the rivalry between Romulus and Remus.

Pretty short, in both cases.

 

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BBH,

What was short? Your wondering or the rivalry?

Ah, you just put my thoughts into a fashionable and presentable form. You are soooo smaaaaat.

But what do you think of the idea that "the passion of old, now gone", as Gendanken complained, is actually the same kind of construct as der Minnesang?




PMT,

Word juggling.

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I'm afraid reading all those poetic books made me quite unpoetic.

I'm not sure we have an understanding: I mean that just because XY, when writing a book, is all happy and passionate and joyous -- doesn't mean that when I read that book will also feel that happiness or passion or joy or whatever. Maybe the author loved writing it -- but maybe I'll be bored to death reading it.

I'll quote Gendanken: "Think Derrida."
(Hundreds of wasted pages and destroyed hours. And I haven't remembered one single thing, that's how bored I was. I learned it for the exam, and then it just vanished. Phhh.)



Dr. Lou,

People show off with what they have. Or with what they think they have. Either way, they show off with what they have.

 

it struck me that this thread started off as something of an intellectuals agreeing how bad the world can be to them thread. So, I offer a thought, which is that muscular athletic people get more kudos in part cos they can more immediately get more money in sponsorship, also because their activity is fairly clear, and appeals to the competitive nature in many people, and finally, no matter how fast you can run you cant run faster than a bullet. If you ever become a problem or something, you can be taken down easily with a tool of some sort. But if your an intellectual, nobody knows what is going on inside your head. You could be plotting anything and we wouldnt know, plus the intelligence and intellectual bit suggests that you might do something unexpected, new, creative, that means you cant be shot at, or that you upset the nice safe comfortable applecart somehow.

 

DR. LOU NATIC WROTE: I truely hate it when innocent light simple communication between idiots sparks up some deep and meaningfull statements from some eavesdropping intellectual douche.

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I think I kind of, sort of, agree with that.

................. ROSA:

Some good thoughts there. YOUR statement: They can be an example of "shunnig of intellect" or simply of reviling those who are not like the majority.

Maybe we were not fully considering that many of those whom we now admire so much were not admired so much while they lived. This being true, then where were all the passionate folks who yearned to learn; for sure, they were in the minority. The reactions of the people in general were more like, "We already know what is right and are in agreement, and you are an impious idiot," or something like that.

 

to Big Blue Head……………who responded: What I meant by compactness is that I've never read Goethe and hence would not dream of denying the veracity of the body of his works. Rather, I'll only deny the veracity of what's immediately to hand (if I have a problem with it). As it happens, I have read Plato, and thus I am prone to criticize them as a whole. In general I view the words of Socrates in much the same way I view Clan of the Cave Bear - that is, fiction with a lot of effort behind it, but fiction nonetheless.

PMT: I was merely responding to some adverse comments about Socrates, which were initially that he did not exist, following with some name calling…toward him. So, >he does exist, but if he does, trash him, or something like that. I was curious more than anything. All this because I mentioned his very well-known statement about knowing nothing. That is a good statement, and is at the core of my philosophy. Not because Socrates reportedly said it. Apostle Paul said some things that were very similar, which, incidentally, I was familiar with before I ever read The Apology. Yet! Not because Paul said it, because it is true…for me. This is how I feel; the more I learn, the more I realize how much I do not know.

BigBlueHead: Plato's account of knowledge, which is one of the roots of his entire philosophy, requires the existence of Plato's heaven with all its perfect forms. I think this is crap, and so I find any of Socrates' words highly suspect. Of all of the characters in his collected dialogues, I most closely identified with Thrasymachus, pissing around because Socrates is, honestly, kind of annoying. (I thought the Republic was particularly bad news... anyway.)

I did not bring up the subject of Plato, dear heart.

BBH: It's not that I wish to engage in some kind of metaphysical wrestling match with a long-dead authors who can't account for themselves... rather, I don't always like when people come to the table armed with analogies and pithy quotes.

Why you poor humble thing.

BBH: I say nooooo.... but dropping Goethe on the conversation like a ton of bricks isn't necessarily the best way to achieve clarity. Similarly, Plato's love letters to Socrates are not always the answer to any question about educating the stupid... it should be noted in the Republic, much as LeoDV's throwing around, that Plato believed an underclass of the stupid had to be maintained, in order to take care of those duties that were beneath the wise and benificient. No egalitarian Plato... and I have no idea what he thought about nerds. That's why I'm not interested in bringing him into the discussion.

So, you say I “dropped Goethe like a ton of bricks.” What does that mean exactly?

BBH: It is best, if you can, to use your own words and defend them yourself. This isn't a respected periodical and I'm not going to call you out for not citing your sources. If you want to display your academic influences, then fine, but quotes can obfuscate, particularly when one tries to bend them to a discussion they didn't originally concern.

Atta boy! Be insulting. It would PERHAPS behoove you to get your facts straight. Apparently, you had not been following the thread.
1) I was not defending myself.
2) I was not defending Socrates, just wondering why it was so seemingly popular to either disallow him a place in history, or to trash him. Believe it or not, I know a couple of other people who have been to college and/or read a book, and yet was unaware than the trendy thing seems to be to deny Soc’s existence, and/or trash any authenticity to his words.
3) I did not bring Plato into this thread. (incidentally, mostly I agree with you re: Plato, but still find it rather interesting reading, when I have the time, but almost never discuss it).
4) I have never read Goethe either—just happen to have had some quotes on hand, nor did I say I had.
5) There is so much I have not read that I would scarcely dare to brag, besides that is not my style. So, what is your style? To jump all over someone.

Excuse me, but you come across as a rather presumptuous individual; so, at least be good enough to reconsider your smarty-pants comments. Following is an excerpt, showing where (and why) I quoted Goethe.

GENERAL QUOTE, WITH THE GOETHE QUOTE:
Why are you guys on Socrates so hard and heavy, is this a trendy thing to do?

As I am bushed tonight, please bear with me while I let Goethe speak for me:

"Often in the literary world people doubt the originality of this
or that celebrated man, and seek to trace out the sources when he
obtained his cultivation. Ridiculous! We might as well question a
strong man about the oxen, sheep, and swine, he has eaten, which have
given him strength. We are indeed born with faculties; but we owe our
development to a thousand influences of the great world, from which we
appropriate what we can and what is suitable...What is important is to
have a soul that loves truth and assimilates it whenever found.... The
truth must be repeated over and over again; because error is repeatedly
preached among us, not only by individuals, but by the masses."

(eoq)

I thought it fit, but then I do a lot of thinking and comparing. In any event, it surely seems to me that denying old Soc any credit for saying anything, is kind of, sort of, a little bit relative to Goethe’s main thrust in the quote I offered, (above).

FROM BBH:
I am the one they call BigBlueHead/
BigBlueBeard's where it BigBlueLed/
So never ye mind what I BigBlueSaid/
And hie me off to my BigBlueBed.

I THOUGHT THAT WAS REALLY CUTE, but this was before I read the rest of your post, then I did not think you were so cute after all.

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Make sense?

pmt

 

pmt WROTE: “ Think of it this way, …enthusiasm is the interest, eagerness and intensity that makes us want to know something, or get somewhere, and joy is what ensues; or in the “getting somewhere,” the never-forgotten thrill of the experiences and the glow of the lasting memories . ”

ROSA RESPONDED TO MY ATTEMPT TO BE HELPFUL THUSLY:

Word juggling.

I'm afraid reading all those poetic books made me quite unpoetic.

pmt: I was only responding to your question, smarty pants.

 

Yes, exactly!! It is the oh so well known syndrome of the artist not being appreciated while alive.
They burned Giordano Bruno, look what Galileo ended up saying!
Beethoven -- he lost most of his big fans with the 4th symphony, and was since then regarded as an old selfish bastard.
Johann Sebastian Bach: his music was greatly shunned while he was still alive, being called "empty, cold, and artificial"!
Mozart was a party animal, but that didn't stop him from dying a miserable death in poverty, and unrespected.

And others can surely come up with examples from other fields.

 

Okie dokie, smarty pants to you too.

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You need to teach me new words and phrases in this field!

 

Are we really so hard and heavy on him?


And I counter you with another Wolferl Goethe quote:
"Elegance is the taste of other people."

You quoted the man:

And I'll counter you with yet another one of his:
"Das ist die wahre Symbolik, wo das Besondere das Allgemeine repräsentiert."

(This is true symbolism, where the general is represented by the special.)

Ah, we are merely seeing further: it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.

 

Brilliant, just plain brilliant.

 

PMT: These are the original statements that I believe we're still arguing over. I'm quite sure that this isn't what anyone really wants to talk about in this thread, so I'll try to make this as brief as possible.

1) You brought Plato into the works by mentioning Socrates. You can't have Socrates with no Plato, because all of the Socratic dialogues were written by Plato.

2) You may find Plato/Socrates' words meaningful, but that doesn't make them historical fact. I find Darth Vader's return to the Good side to be a meaningful event, and it contains a certain degree of truth - perhaps no person is beyond help - but that doesn't mean it ever really happened.

3) You've taken my assertion of (2) as an attack - specifically on Socrates, but more generally on the Great Man theory of historical analysis (that people rise to power and greatness through their own efforts, rather than by the caprice of circumstance - hence, a Napoleon or a Hannibal would have done well in other circumstances than those recorded). In order to defend those Great Men of History, you threw out a quote from Goethe, claiming to be too tired to explain it. The quote, which is about not trying to analyze a person's influences, initially seemed unrelated to me, until I realized (very recently) that you were still arguing that Plato's recorded dialogues ACTUALLY HAPPENED because you found them MEANINGFUL. This is still wrong.

4) Who cares if I describe Socrates' words as suspect because they are being used as a vehicle for Plato's metaphysics? Would Socrates have cared if I called him names? I imagine that the dialogue would have gone something like this:

BigBlueHead: I find your words suspect because they are being used as a vehicle for an insupportable metaphysics. Also you are a dog raping baby eater.
Socrates: I would never question the judgement of such a wise one as yourself, although I must confess that I do not recall indulging the propensities you describe. Neither do I always understand, when I say these words, what terrible weight others may lay upon them. But, BigBlueHead, how do you think that one person would cause injury to another?
BigBlueHead: Why, by striking them, Socrates.
Socrates: And so to cause a person harm, one might strike them with a hard object like a rock, or perhaps one made of wood?
BigBlueHead: By Zeus, yes.
Socrates: And we would probably observe that if these sticks or stones were employed with sufficient force, that they would fracture the bones of the injured person.
BigBlueHead: It is so.
Socrates: On the other hand, can we say that the calling of nasty names, such as "dog raping baby eater", though it may cause some stress or discomfort, does no physical harm?
BigBlueHead: Yes, we can say that.
Socrates: Then we may conclude that, though sticks and stones may break one's bones, one can never be hurt by nasty names.

Here we have a fictitious dialogue with two fictitious people describing a fundamental truth of human nature - the "sticks and stones" precept that most of us learned as children, which says that the harm done by insults is incomparably small next to the pain of physical injury.

There is truth to the "sticks and stones" proverb.
That doesn't mean that the above dialogue happened.

Still, people ascribe the same Truth to the Socratic dialogues that they ascribe to observable phenomena like gravity or the evaporation of water, because "Socrates was really alive once." The Truth of the "sticks and stones" statement is not the same as the Truth of being insulted and realizing that the pain of the insult pales compared to the pain of cutting your finger, and thus can be disregarded.

Similarly, the Truth of Plato's account of Socrates' dialogues is not the same as the Truth of a person's words that you can observe more directly; Aristotle wrote his own material, for instance, so after we make allowances for translation, you can get one degree of seperation closer to Aristotle than you ever will to Socrates.

I think I've jacked this thread enough.

P.S. I am crushed that you no longer think me cute, but not as crushed as I would have been by, I dunno, a big rock or a log or something.

EDIT: That is brief, for a Socratic dialogue.

 

Dr. Lou:

You misspelled focus. Now [deleted].

(kidding- good point. I already figured it has nothing to do with an athlete feeling inferior to a prodigy for he does not- its something more like an annoyance for an abnormality he sees as defect. An evasedropping intellectual [deleted] but I have a really hard time picturing Mr. Turing jumping up on a poker table showing his basketball moves.

He never bothered anyone.)

LeoDv

Another strikeout, you [deleted].

go to the first page of this thread
press Control + F. A search dilogue box pops up. Now type in 'culture'.

We're only in this abysmall hole of "culture" bullshit because of you, I never once wanted to speak of culture. Case.[deleted].Closed.

And this is where you are actually making sense for once, now you get it! and I agree completely. It is the degree of membership, as Bigblue will have it as well, that people find comfort in.

Its only natural that 9 out 10 people on the street identify with their televisions, and given that with a 'nerd' there is the promise of odd silence and the awakwardness that comes with a relationship that shares little more than the air they both breathe in common, 9 out of 10 people will avoid him.
This, to the outsider and the 'nerd' himself, can be seen as scorn or revulsion when its only innocent avoidance.

Yes? Would you agree? Or would you rather just sit there with your mouth open like a special ed kid? Speaking of which:

You say: "Yes, the media is watered down nonsense. Yes, its counterproductive bullshit. Yes, it fucking sucks but at least we have more people than ever exposed to it! This makes this age the most cultured age imaginable!"

I said in response: "How many buckets of water does it take to 'culture' wine if all one has is water?"

And you still don't get it, huh? This, ladies and gentlmen, a self praclaimed smart, arrogant, crow getting lost in small sentences.

Bigblue:

Aye.
Aye.Aye.Aye.

Membership. I understand. Its all in the membership.

Guthrie:

No it is not my little friend.

If I were picking my nose and did not know it was impolite, I'd be writing about the act of picking the nose and not reading.


Lastly:

Pmt: When Leo says this:
"It's a delicious pleasure to read you. However I'll reply to your post later."

What it really means is that you have written way too many paragraphs and he cannot afford to look stupid in you having addressed them to him, so he has to play like he read them and try blindsighting you with some shit about reading you being 'delicious' and posting 'later'.

Fountainhed does this as well.

 

Remember in Fahrenheit 451, that TV show where everyone on the screen would say "What do you think?" and then turn and look at you, and be silent for a moment before going back to the show?

Spend enough time in the company of the TV, and I suppose any interaction with other people would be difficult and grating. Another kind of nerd, perhaps...

 

Big Blue Head,

I enjoyed the Socrates mimicry. It is so essential.

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Well, it ain't braggin' if you can do it.

 

FROM GENDANKEN TO PMT:
Lastly:

Pmt: When Leo says this:
"It's a delicious pleasure to read you. However I'll reply to your post later."

What it really means is that you have written way too many paragraphs and he cannot afford to look stupid in you having addressed them to him, so he has to play like he read them and try blindsighting you with some shit about reading you being 'delicious' and posting 'later'.

Fountainhed does this as well."

Well, I did wonder what was meant by that. I respond to people the best way I know how, and without BS, (except when I try to be funny!

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) This thread has provoked some interesting comments, and some really odd-ball statements as well. I guess that is good, huh?

Chow.

 

to Rosa, who wrote: Are we really so hard and heavy on him? (speaking of Soc)

"Hard on him," does not cover it. It is just that most of the folks I know who have much knowledge of philosophy, accept Socrates as authenic. This does not, however, need to imply that he is my hero, or anything like that. (Not that you did, but it was implied.) Good grief, I offered only one quote!

Okie dokie.

 

From Rosa: They burned Giordano Bruno, look what Galileo ended up saying!
Beethoven -- he lost most of his big fans with the 4th symphony, and was since then regarded as an old selfish bastard. Johann Sebastian Bach: his music was greatly shunned while he was still alive, being called "empty, cold, and artificial"!
Mozart was a party animal, but that didn't stop him from dying a miserable death in poverty, and unrespected. And others can surely come up with examples from other fields.

Nonetheless, we will each, as usual, go away from this topic with our own image of other time and our times. If, however, this thread has stirred our thoughts, and I am sure it has, our gray matter will be better for it.

 

Big Blue Head;

Go chase yourself! What kind of self inflating crap is that?

Pardon my being so rude, but that is such a bunch of nonsense, which seems to me to be more of an attempt to be clever than sincere.