The day after, reflections.

[strmrdr]

Date: 11/8/2008 6:21:39 PM
Author: FrekeChild

Date: 11/8/2008 5:52:30 PM

Author: strmrdr

Date: 11/8/2008 5:22:35 PM

Author: FrekeChild

What makes someone an Intellectual Elitist anyway?


(Someone needs to enlighten this Pastry/Shoe Elitist...)

Someone who thinks they are better than someone else because of their self perceived Intellect.

Often collect paper that they think shows them to be intellectual and spend large sums of money collecting it rather than doing something useful.

So you''re saying I''m an elitist because I''m getting an education? How about the fact that my first degree was in culinary arts? Is that not useful? Not to mention I worked, doing something useful, the entire time I was getting said degree.


Is my FF an elitist because he''s getting his third expensive (and mostly paid for by the government in one way or another) piece of paper, in order to teach other elites (read, undergraduate students) OR to crunch numbers for the federal government, so that the world can be a better place (through preventing crime, I might add)? And he''s spent the time when he was not being elite, helping out others, through tutoring, to become elite?


Karl, I''m not picking on you, but I''ve been discriminated against because I was ''elite'' (got that associates in culinary arts) and the chef I was working for FIRED me AND LOOKED DOWN ON ME because I had an ''expensive'' piece of paper.


I''m sorry, but I, and a growing number of the population, seems to think getting an education is a good thing. Did you know that college enrollment goes WAY up when the economy is in a poo hole? People can''t find jobs because they are somehow lacking in fulfilling those job requirements, and decide to go back to school because degrees are one way to fulfill those requirements. More and more jobs are requiring at least a four year degree. That is why I went back to school. That, and apparently to become more elite.


If an education is all you need to be an intellectual elitist, then count me in as an intellectual elitist. Heck, apparently I was one at the age of 20! And here I was thinking that I was just a Pastry and Shoe elitist!

Just getting an education does not make one an elitist it is an attitude.
I am sorry that that guy was a jerk to you and that I touched a nerve with the second part.

 

[strmrdr]

Date: 11/8/2008 8:00:16 PM
Author: purrfectpear
Being an intellectual doesn''t make you better than the GED holder, it just makes you generally smarter

not true it just means you went to school more.

 

[Ellen]

Guys, I guess no one was "smart enough" to get my drift. Can we please stay on topic?

 

[decodelighted]

Date: 11/8/2008 8:08:15 PM
Author: Ellen
Guys, I guess no one was ''smart enough'' to get my drift.

Do you remember the great part of BROADCAST NEWS where some network exec. snaps at Holly Hunter''s character "It must be so great to always think you''re the smartest person in the room!" And she sighs: "No! Its AWFUL!" I totes agree with her ...

 

[Ellen]

Date: 11/8/2008 8:23:27 PM
Author: decodelighted

Date: 11/8/2008 8:08:15 PM
Author: Ellen
Guys, I guess no one was ''smart enough'' to get my drift.

Do you remember the great part of BROADCAST NEWS where some network exec. snaps at Holly Hunter''s character ''It must be so great to always think you''re the smartest person in the room!'' And she sighs: ''No! Its AWFUL!'' I totes agree with her ...

LOL! No, I don''t remember that. But I like it.

 

[FrekeChild]

Date: 11/8/2008 7:37:04 PM
Author: Ellen
You guys are dumb.

I tend to agree. No one knows everything, and we all have something to learn. Unfortunately people not only tend to forget that, but also WANT to forget that. Ignorance becomes no one.

Besides, I''d much rather be looked at as dumb and then occasionally surprise someone when I know something they don''t know.

 

[FrekeChild]

Date: 11/8/2008 8:05:58 PM
Author: strmrdr
Just getting an education does not make one an elitist it is an attitude.
I am sorry that that guy was a jerk to you and that I touched a nerve with the second part.

Oh I hear you. I've known some pompous @$$holes in my time, and they were elitists all of the way.

That DOOSH that fired me was definitely one of them. Funny how the world works, isn't it?

ETA: Sorry Ellen. I'm done threadjacking now. But for the record my hamsters are glad that Obama is getting a dog and not a cat. And they are glad the election is over because they don't have to be woken up by volunteers knocking on the door.

 

[LaraOnline]

Date: 11/8/2008 4:31:27 PM

I agree with Moon 100%! But I''m left wondering something: I''m just now graduating from college at age 27...so do I become an intellectual elitist the day of graduation, or the day after?

haha funny question!

Probably about six months into your first job, when you''re doing really well, your employer loves you and your parents can''t stop reminding you how proud they are....

then, you stop being an intellectual elitist about 10 years later, when it gradually dawns on you that some of the most intelligent, gutsiest, hardest working and most successful business people you know all left school early and were earning a wage, being an adult, learning the ropes, while you were impressing the teachers ...

well, that''s what happened to me and my husband, anyway...

 

[ksinger]

A few (disjointed probably) observations. There are people in existence who are smarter than me. Much much smarter than me. They are wired better from birth and have more education. Sometimes they even KNOW that they are very smart. Sometimes, this knowledge that they are smarter than me MAY make it into their discourse. One of the defining things about the very intelligent is that they are intelligent enough to know this! Shock. Now, I may get my knickers in a personal twist if they are arrogant a*******, but if I turn off my visceral reactions, they're still much much smarter than me. No way around it. They ARE elite, in the best sense of the word. Now, I would be less intelligent than I am, if I were to dismiss every word out of their arrogant mouths as worthless simply because they threaten my sense of self. I read what they have to say, (just as I read what the merely intellectual but not arrogant have to say.) I have to say, that I find their observations about the world, in general, to be more insightful and informed than those of rednecks at filling stations, who are, also in general, equally arrogant about the virtues of remaining exactly as they are and never even fleetingly entertaining a different viewpoint.

The danger I see, and quite a few others have seen too, and for a long time, is that by constantly conflating "intellectual" (not a bad thing, by most accounts, or why do we even bother to train "the intellect" by schooling?) with "elitism" (the arrogant belief in the absolute superiority of yourself), you get sneering attitudes towards the learned among us, not all of whom are arrogant, not by a long shot. And with that, you get the instant, knee-jerk dismissal of anyone who trots out an analysis that is more complex than a black/white dichotomy. And soon it becomes a complete distrust of any learning (aside from nuts-and-bolts stuff - what I call the "glorified vo-tech" type learning) that might make a person have to actually examine his own biases and assumptions about the world.

(and now, the big disjoint - the thing that just kept floating in my mind as I typed this)

Michaelangelo was by all accounts, a real stinker. Literally, and figuratively. His personal habits were revolting, he was almost completely paranoid, KNEW he was incredibly gifted, and moaned daily about being surrounded by idiots and having to do anything he didn't WANT to just to make filthy lucre. The Pope, who was no amateur in the arrogance department, wanted to wring his neck, and seemed almost scared of him at times. But I'm glad for all of us who came after, that he was not labeled and from then on instantly dismissed as "one of those damned artistic elitists".

 

[Ellen]

Thank you to all who offered your reflections/thoughts, I loved reading them!


And Irish, it might interest you to know that I have cried several times in the last couple days over the election. I think it has finally hit me that he won, and that he "seems" to be putting his people together, and tackling the transition and issues with the same calm, assertive, thoughtful, deliberateness he did with his campaign. I hold so much hope right now.


Can I have my tissues back?

 

[LaraOnline]

Date: 11/9/2008 9:19:11 AM
Author: ksinger
A few (disjointed probably) observations.

ksinger, totally awesome post!!

although I have met a few first-year university tutors who thought they already knew everything. But that was probably more a function of youth, and of never getting out of a comfort zone, rather than education per se.
Hey, we''ve all been there.

Some educational courses plug into this youthful inability to recognise that which we do not know, and can have a ''fait-accompli'' aspect to opinion development.
How on earth could I have done a political degree, and graduate only having respect for the left side of politics? Which is what happened.

It was only when my environment changed (opened own business) that I gradually began to develop a clearer understanding of what ''the other side'' of the system was on about.

The school of hard knocks has shown me that the conservative also has a rich - and liberating - perspective on human nature, and that some of its perspectives on how life works are very valid indeed.

So in many ways, life itself can be the best teacher, although all inputs, especially formal education, add to the richer learning environment.

 

[Irishgrrrl]

Date: 11/9/2008 4:20:00 PM
Author: Ellen
Thank you to all who offered your reflections/thoughts, I loved reading them!


And Irish, it might interest you to know that I have cried several times in the last couple days over the election. I think it has finally hit me that he won, and that he ''seems'' to be putting his people together, and tackling the transition and issues with the same calm, assertive, thoughtful, deliberateness he did with his campaign. I hold so much hope right now.


Can I have my tissues back?

Awww, Ellen! Have a seat over here and we can share the tissues!

 

[Ellen]

Date: 11/9/2008 6:52:48 PM
Author: Irishgrrrl
Awww, Ellen! Have a seat over here and we can share the tissues!

Thanks you!

 

[VRBeauty]

Thank you, Ksinger and LaraOnLine for your insightful posts!

 

[LaraOnline]

Date: 11/10/2008 2:09:29 AM
Author: VRBeauty
Thank you, Ksinger and LaraOnLine for your insightful posts!

Hey, I hope I''m using the terms ''conservative'' and ''liberal'' correctly. On our side of the planet, ''liberal'' means the right (pro-business) side of politics. I guess that means ''conservative'' in your language, huh?