Audience participation requested

[velvetpage]

Statement: people who are insecure in their own intellectual pursuits find intelligence and higher learning intimidating. This effect is magnified when the higher learning is in a field seen as esoteric, particularly abstract, or which most people see as "other." (For example, few people are intimidated by a graduate degree in teaching, because people see teaching as something they can relate to; they were in school themselves, after all. But a graduate degree in microbiology or physics is an entirely different story.)

Discuss.

(Note: this topic came up a few weeks ago and I never got back to it, and I was just reading back in my journal and spotted it. I am about to take pain meds and have a hot shower to get the knots out of my shoulders before I go to bed, so play nice until tomorrow morning!)

Comments

[lovmelovmycats.livejournal.com]

One of my husband's esoteric intellectual pursuits is philosophy, and I find it intimidating. I have tried to read it, but my eyes start to cross. I managed (long ago) to get through some of C.S. Lewis's nonfiction, which was heavy, but not as heavy as other philosophers, and I was a Christian at the time, so it didn't hurt that he was speakin' my language/preaching to the choir.
I've read some history/biographies about philosophers, my favorite one being The Courtier and the Heretic about Liebniz and Spinoza. And I'm reading about Rousseau now (wanker!). But I can't plow through their works!

My preferred areas of study include memorizing a lot of interesting facts and new words. Like studying language, or taking medical courses. I love history, but I've only loved one history class out of the many I've taken. I'm more of a self-teacher in history.

About the science degrees you mentioned: they sound cool, but not intimidating to me. Now, math; that's intimidating! I know the Physicist has to do all kinds of calc. But when I was in college, I rocked at Physics math while I barely passed math. I guess it was important to me that it had context.

[lovmelovmycats.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I didn't state an opinion. I would say I slightly disagree, but it's hard to know. I don't know who is or is not "insecure" in their own intellectual pursuits.

[lee-in-limbo.livejournal.com]

It sort of goes both ways, really. It's just that academics are trained to see their isolation from those elements of society that less intellectual people enjoy as being a sign of their superiority. Conversely, less intellectual, or more accurately less educated people tend to feel that academics are out of touch and don't know as much as they think they do about what really matters, and thus are seen as inferior. It's a reverse form of snobbery, but both points are not entirely invalid. It's a communications barrier, almost a class barrier. It is not a sign of innate superiority. It's a sign of failure of both parties to understand and appreciate the value of one another's continued influence.

As well, it's not an either/or situation. There are many shades of grey between the high and the low brow intellect. We just tend to accent to two extremes, as we would any other classist issue.

Lee.

[archai.livejournal.com]

I have to disagree just a little that it's strictly a matter of training to see isolation from less intellectual elements of society as a sign of superiority. I've seen it work the other way around: intellectuals really don't enjoy the same things, most often because they tend to lack the element of intellectual stimluation that intellectuals enjoy, and non-intellectuals take that as a snub, whether it was intended snobbily or not.

I will, however, concede that there's a lot of poser faking in the high-brow crowd, and an equal amount of waving around how bored someone is by the dull commonness of some event or another. Like all poser faking, that's just ridiculous.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I agree - it's common for people to see me as a snob when I can't operate on the level they're operating on. I like intellectual stimulation, and activities that don't stimulate my intellect generally don't interest me.

[tormentedartist.livejournal.com]

Honestly I wouldn't know. I just assume that every profession has its knowledge which could be considered esoteric to some.

[archai.livejournal.com]

I agree, but I think it's more a bad societal byproduct for the non-intellectuals. I get to see this in my dad sometimes. He's got an MED and he's a career educator, but in the practical arts, and he does NOT respond well to percieved snobbery by self-styled intellectuals. He doesn't put it in these terms, but he's got good reason: that sort of person puts a lot of stock in intensive education, but often refuses in quiet ways to admit the validity of his skill and experience, either as an educator or as an artisan ("those who can't do, teach" is a bald-faced lie: he's a phenomenal woodworker). He generally doesn't bother to toss out his graduate credentials to that sort unless he's getting into an argument with them and they throw theirs first.

Where this is a societal problem is that the same trend seems to have been applied to a lot of modern education. The validity of the sciences is quickly recognized; we teach reading and mathematics and all manner of other things, but tend to leave the arts out or relegate them to one or two classes here and there. Intuitive and spatial reasoning are abandoned almost completely, and we're very lucky anyone at all turns up with any notability in that sort of talent anymore, since nearly everyone who does has brought up their skillset and honed their intuition almost untutored in the wild - or if tutored, they've been tutored outside of conventional education.

Basically, we tend to leave right-brain-dominant people out in the cold, unless they can adapt sufficiently well to left-brain pursuits to earn some sort of recognition. This, I feel, is a damn shame. If you know the validity of your own talents but nobody will ever believe you've got anything worthwhile, of course it's going to put your hackles up when someone starts lauding high the virtues of a highly trained academic. Particularly when, in 90% of all cases outside that academian's field, you can more or less mentally have them for lunch. There's a bit of jealously there, and I don't think it's unreasonable.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Well, most of the highly-trained academics I know are also artists of one sort or another. But then, I move in a rarified world. :)

[(Anonymous)]

The question came up when I was wearing my "Intelligence is the best aphrodesiac" t-shirt. I can't remember how it came up, but the friend who was here pointed out that his in-laws were intimidated by his physics degrees, and he completely didn't get it. (Which is one of the reasons I love that friend, frankly - he's confused by an assumption of intellectual snobbery.) I've seen it before in the Page side of the family, particularly one uncle, when I talked about elements of linguistic theory or pedagogy that he was unfamiliar with. He attempted to shoot me down, and the only reason I could see for it was anti-intellectual snobbery; HIS profession didn't take six years of overpriced university to get good at, so he had just as much knowledge as I did! (No, I did not point out the logical fallacies there. I value my relatives, even the ones who don't know a logical fallacy when it slaps them in the face.)

I find it's most prevalent when it comes to math and science degrees, probably because it's culturally acceptable to admit that you're no good at math. That means the people who admit to being good at it, and enjoying it, are immediately seen as "other". It is very much a class distinction; someone who has a degree or two in another field is far less likely to be intimidated than someone who barely finished high school. Education has become the dividing line between working-middle class and (for want of a better term) thinking-middle class.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Oops. Forgot to log in. That was me.

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

Please don't tell me that you're implying, since I have not completed a college degree, and I probably never will, I'm of a *working* and not a *thinking* class. There are people whose conversations would have me totally lost in any field I have not studied. The fact that a course of higher education has been completed is an accomplishment. I will never be able to grasp certain facts the way they do, being unfamiliar with them. But you can not say that a degree *makes* you more of a thinker than a worker. Makes society see you as one, perhaps.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

It's not the education itself that forms the barrier; it's the view of oneself as intellectually driven and capable of holding one's own in matters of intellectual discourse. That surety usually, but not always, comes to people via higher education. In my dad's case, it came through self-education; he's done enough reading to have an M. Div, without actually having the courses to go with it. He's not intimidated by intelligence at all.

I also think that this is a classic issue of social constructivism. Is the lack of a degree holding someone back because they don't believe they're capable of anything else, or because society doesn't see them as being capable, or is it a bit of both? I suspect that much of the time, it's a bit of both.