by: Tushar Jain
Of the motley of neurotic, egoistical, (or even, egotistical for that matter) overbearing megalomaniacs I come across, or those that are borne of this world as a jocular hex of the fraudulent mirth of the occasionally epochal time and all the unworthy foibles of promiscuous mothers, have given way to the most odious notion that quite some of them are intellectuals. Believe you me… they are not.
Most of them are intellectual-wannabes, the kind of people that are flustered with almost all equations of life; they try to be uptight, condescending and aloof, unrelentingly giving themselves airs; they talk of ‘bad things’ (the ones that fall in contrast with their temperament) in muted whispers and ‘good things’ (everything that is morally great like assisting an old woman across the street) in vociferating, feral pitches. They are blatant, self-unconscious people with the insistent nettling knack of subordinating everything else without clause, without raison d'être. This is the sort that is on hand in deluging, surging volumes; most invariably, these are women.
The second chapter of conniving counterfeit intellectuals falls in place with regard to men. However, like almost every feat or deed committed by a man is for the holy sake of getting some action in the sack, trying to mime intellectuality is yet another on the list. These are the kind that falls short of sex appeal, the sort of people who have been pummeled in street corners and have been misbegotten for Woody Allen, the kind that can wilt and shrivel into a coke carton without even trying. To be grossly candid – the dorks, nerds and geeks. Intellectuality is a shrouding sheath they hide beneath, one where they can build their prized esteem against their liabilities.
The long and short of it is that there are multitudes of fragile individuals who pose as intellectuals, suppressing their most normative mentality to produce an extorting outset for the perfect roles to play. To be wary of them, one has to saunter over the large, bourgeoning isthmus ‘twixt individuality and intellectuality.
Table manners, taciturn nature, grace, intellect, acumen, the gift of gab, intelligence, benevolence, steady disdain, loftiness – these are the yet believed-to-exist ethical rites that an intellectual seemingly must contrive. In sheer actuality, these are the exact traits an individual must be ridden of for a conscious onset toward intellectuality. An intellectual’s forte is neither his good conduct nor is his aptitude to be nimbly introverted – it’s his absence of humanness, it’s his absolute dearth of frailties, it is but his superhuman deftness in being alien.
An intellectual must be a soul subtracted of hobbies, desires, habits, love, interests, affection and materialistic instincts. He must be an atheist so that he can rely on naught and cannot digress his shortcomings with devout alibis; he must be a misanthrope so that he does not relent for the sake of values and person; he must be a misogynist, indulge in misandry, be a pessimist, be inexorably cynical, be a misogamist, an intolerant ingrate… so that all what he believes in, should neither be a construct of life nor be consistent and sated with adventures of his faith’s perfection.
There are but a definite handful of these alive and a sorrier chance is left for more to enliven. Because in a race as this, either the definition of an intellectual must change or humanity may, in all probability be, forsaken with yet another genus endangered.