The Weekly Rant with Gary Patella

Thoughts and ideas on various grievances that are relevant to everyday life.

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

On The Pseudo Intellectuals

There are seven billion people currently inhabiting this planet. With so many individuals, there is obviously a great deal of variety present in all human aspects. There are various phenotypes, abilities, religions, fashions, and various levels of knowledge. However, when it comes to knowledge there seems to be less of a continuum and more of a dividing line. On one side there are people that possess a great deal of knowledge and on the other side there are those that know next to nothing.

When it comes to the group of individuals that have very little knowledge, there are two subdivisions: those that clearly have an inferior intellect and those that act and pretend to know a great deal more than they do. It is the latter group that will be the focus of this rant. Because these individuals are not knowledgeable, yet act as though they are, I like to refer to them as the pseudo intellectuals.

True intellectuals have a thirst for knowledge. Information is sought out and soaked up for sheer enjoyment. Pseudo intellectuals on the other hand have no desire to obtain any knowledge or verify any alleged facts. These individuals focus their time and energy to the art of bullshitting. They talk at great length making a large number of false claims in the process. They speak in such a manner that those who are ignorant of the truth wind up believing a host of lies. Therein lies the trouble.

Furthermore, people will actually use this person as a source of reference. The pseudo intellectual will answer questions without actually knowing the answer. But rather than say "I don't know," the pseudo intellectual will make something up that sounds plausible. And if ever the pseudo intellectual is challenged, he or she tends to use a stubborn approach in order to create doubt in the mind of the challenger.

So we are left with a situation where false knowledge is being spewed out and swallowed up by those in contact with the pseudo intellectual. And the only people that can dispel the lies are the true intellectuals, which are few and far between. It may be a foolish pet peeve, but misinformation really gets my goad. And I feel obliged to correct all of the misconceptions that originated with the pseudo intellectuals.

So to all of the pseudo intellectuals out there, please stop bullshitting! If you spent your time actually learning rather than practicing the art of deception, you would be able to dispense correct information. In short, stop talking out of your ass!!

2 Comments:

At 1:05 PM , Blogger Unknown said...

Pseudo Intellectuals huh? I think you need to include a category for Specialists somewhere inbetween the know nothings and the knowledgeable people. Specialists would be highly informed in a narrow class of information. Any person who has been successfully employed in the same job for 10+ years gets the rating specialist, they know a great deal about Carpentry, or Law, or McDonalds.


And I would like to say that there is an art, or rather knack, to bullshitting. It is a skill of no small means, and shouldn't be denigrated.

WB to the rants Gary!

 
At 10:30 PM , Anonymous Saf said...

Haha I totally agree with you Gary. I am one of these psuedo intellectuals to be honest, I find it a habit (bad one at that), but I do not do so because I am stupid or unable to learn, I do learn and love to learn and take in information left right and centre, just a lot of the times I do not find the official line to suit my take on topics/subjects, so I have to invent some bullshit explanation to match my ideas on the topic lol. Sure some of them are far fetched, but most the time I just bend the truth towards what I belive to be the truth :P.

 

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