Article on Intellectuals

Before I even start here is an article that Justin posted on my facebook. It is really long and ranty and all kinds of big words are in it.


I will admit that I probably understood less than 10% of what was actually talked about. Politics is not at all one of my strengths. It is probably one of my most hated things in this current society. But I did read it. I tried to look for the things on intellectuals and other stuff like that. This is something I like to hear and read about.

He starts off with a good mention of intellectuals and how they are diminishing and goes on in a way that I can like. I too believe that it is horrible that there are so few intellectuals left. I was ok with everything so far. I was alright with this kind of writing. Then he started to bash conservatives. He was against neoliberalism as well. I'm not sure what this is exactly. I tried looking it up but all that stuff just goes right over my head.

He talks about how politics is increasing ignorance in people and is run by people who act less smart than they are in order to get votes. I feel like this is highly probable. I don't pay attention to politics because it bores me. People are only interested by things that affect them. If someone is voting, you want to grab their attention. "I will lower your taxes." "Well hell, I vote for that guy." People only want to hear what will make their lives better. They don't want to hear that lower those taxes means raising prices on everything else. So leave out the things that no one wants to hear. That just makes you sound less intelligent to someone who knows about politics.

Politics is something I try to avoid at all costs. And this is where he and I differ. He believes that the institutions and politics should go hand-in-hand. He thinks that intellectuals should care more for government and try to keep it in sync. I think that politicians should be smarter, yes. I however, don't think the two should be hand-in-hand. I personally just think there is too much concern for government altogether. I think something else should be figured out for running everything. I think now the population has become too large to be controlled by any form of government.

I was just talking to one of my professors the other day about how the economy is expanding too fast. She mentioned how production is becoming increasingly automated. Robots and computers can do anything now. Now our unemployment is increasing because there are less jobs due to the jobs being taken by computers. So how can the economy continue to grow if these people have no jobs, no income, and cannot afford products. The economy will be at a standstill. Products will be made but no one will be able to consume them because there will be no money to purchase them. Where will we be then.

First of all I think we are too overpopulated to do anything. I think we need to eliminate some of our population. I don't know how to do this exactly because the last person that did it, ended up fighting the rest of the world because they didn't agree. This reverts back to the Morals blog I posted before. There are too many people that care for their own lives and not the lives of the species as a whole. We are not following the lesson learned by many early on: "Everything in moderation". There are 6 billion+ people. How is that moderate? Far too many for our own good. Diminish population and maybe we can get back on track at least a bit.

Another possible solution to this is a major disaster. I don't mean an earthquake in one small place off the coast of an unknown country. I mean something like Y2K size. Something that will destroy majority of the machines that have taken jobs. Yes, I am suggesting that we start over from scratch. This will give us tons of jobs. We will need to work together to bring our lives back to a reasonable level of comfort. I am suggesting that we lower our expectations to a level that is recognizant of prehistory. We will then have many more jobs and natural selection will kick in again. And population will drop. It doesn't have to be Y2K but something like Fallout 3 would be good too. This will also lower population. We need a major disaster to kick us in the ass so we can get even better.

And then there is the other solution. Send people into space and start populating another place. But of course we don't have the drive and intelligence to do this yet. We are still to stupid to do it. Hence, options 1 and 2.

I personally believe I am an intellectual. I don't mean to say I am intelligent. Others say that, but I know I am not that smart. I am an intellectual because I enjoy learning. I like to think and I love pondering theoretical ideas. This is an intellectual. I do agree with the writer of the article, that intellectuals are disappearing. There are no people around now that have reached the notability of people like Aristotle, Socrates, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin. There are very few people that have reached these types of notability that everyone know. That if you asked anyone who a person is, they could name. And I mean people that are actually intelligent and intellectual not political officials and celebrities. I bet anyone that reads this can't name 5 intellectuals and then find 5 other average people that know all of those 5 intellectuals.

I also wish to talk about the censorship of people by institutions and industries. I personally hate censorship. People should be questioning their surroundings. We should all be thinking and questioning why and how things are happening. Truth is everything to me. I don't lie about anything important. I won't cover up anything that needs to be told. Now of course there is the line of "when can you lie and when can't you?" In an ideal world no one would lie ever. Then there are emotions and other minute things that come into play. Well I believe that any information kept secret needs to be exposed. People should not fear their government; government should fear its people. This goes for secrets as well. There should be no secrets kept from the people. If this is true then there is no need for people to keep things from their government.

I think this will do for today. That should be enough to keep your minds thinking for a bit. That is all I ask. Hopefully more soon.