As with the previous post, this one too is not a memory per se, at least not in terms of a recollected story. Rather I’m writing down the awareness of having changed, of really -seeing- the world in a different way. Any state of mind at a certain moment in time could be considered a memory; since that’s what memory is: stored experience.
So today I write about the memory of being a staunch anti-intellectualist. A sentiment fed into by years of unhappiness in education. I remember almost vowing to myself that one day, if given the means, I would plead and fight for childrens’ freedom. From a young age they were taken away from their parents, from their home, from safety and all that is good in life. It may sound overcharged, but this is literally how I experienced the first day of school, and many mornings after it. As if being put on a daily train to Auswitz for day-camp (back when it wasn’t yet a tourist attraction, of course). The teachers were cruel sadists, venting their frustrations and lust for power on children who only wanted to be children. Children that like play, explore the world and retain their innocence. Instead, you were cornered between a pack of 30 other little wolves (children are indeed savages to one another) on the one side, and parental/educational pressure perform on the other side; made to counter-intuively think and cram al sorts of facts into your mind. The result of which was a hampering in respectively moral development and mental stability.
Then came university with its pretentions. I saw pretentious professors who placed their self-esteem in the study and reverance of other, dead intellectuals. Pretentious students, having gained the right to study by forsaking their childhood, ready to find a guru, embrace a philsophy and look down . This is the problem with intellectuals; they condemned themselves to an unnatural life, hunched over in chairs, skulking in libraries, destroying their eyesight. And what do they do? They praise and other iuntellectuals, who similarly gave up their life, or had none in the first place (being perhaps debilitated or just plain anti-social). A vicious circle of people who dare not bite the hand that feeds them.
Needless to say, anti-intellectualism is not a very popular view among intellectuals. I felt priviliged to be the lone ranger that saw through this facade.
Continue reading ‘Socrates unsatisfied, or a pig satisfied.’
Other posts by David van Ofwegen
