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

[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.