The Meaning of "Being an Intellectual". ⓐⓡ⊞ⓘⓞ

I think part of being an intellectual is
being perpetually profoundly dissatisfied with your own ignorance and then being perpetually profoundly too satisfied with the ignorance of your own society the rule of ignorance in the shaping of and and functioning of your own society um and that may or may not exhibit itself in a in a really directly political way I think is something almost inevitably socio-political there's some kind of social commentary or social critique that's going to come out of that I think holding oneself to that standard you know inevitably leads to social frustrations because you live in a society where people still we can use any example but people still literally cut the foreskin off a baby's penis to act out a ritual you know in the Old Testament you know it's ridiculous there are a thousand possible examples of the absurdities in our sight once you're of that character we hold yourself to that higher standard and you struggle with with your own ignorance so what is the point about one answer you know you virtually before on this YouTube channel the point is Who I am the point is who you want to be and who you want to become right and on some level we all know that I mean it's shallow and it's deep at the same time like what you read and what you care about and what kind of difference trying to make in the world these things they become who you are and you become them in a very real sense if you sit on the couch and watch football and drink beer after work you become a sitting on the couch football watching [ __ ] that's and you are that's it's nothing you can't put that aside so no that's not who I really am that's just yeah you can't think that's not who I really am that's just what I do in my in my free time no that is that is who you are right or you could say your free time is exactly yes yes that's right well I think that's also what haunts intellectuals right I think that's that's what I want see so I mean you know I mean why why try to learn creak it's not like that today can speak the Korean language fluently why try to learn Chinese and why even within that well I care about Chinese politics and history in the kind of critical way that I do well guess what I get to be me you know like that's the final outcome is that that you know it's not that this is something I do that this is you know this is who I am this video has been a long time coming I got a question many months ago from James I'm just using first names James is a longtime supporter on patreon it's someone who's also a vegan involved in baking and I would guess in response to some video or another in which I used the word in passing he asked me what does it mean to you to be an intellectual what is the meaning of being an intellectual in 2018 I got my best girl Willa Sierra off camera she wanted what I'm looking at buddy it's not like I'm looking at notes I've written down from Berkeley or something not looking at my script you know okay I have like six different things to say here and none of them are logically linked together so one of the first things ever say I was chatting with Tcat recently and he met this in a totally positive way but he said jokingly he said you know aisel stop calling yourself an autodidact he said that's one of those laughable things that makes everyone cringe like if you call herself an autodidact he said this was his joke or what he was saying he said it's like calling yourself an entrepreneur you know now I get the joke he's making but this is one of those things wearing a cowboy hat isn't camp and it isn't a costume if you're actually a cowboy if you actually work on a ranch with cows I mean wearing Spurs on your boots it's not a Halloween costume if that's you know that's what you actually are and you know I get the joke he's trying to make like there are people who call themselves an entrepreneur maybe especially on YouTube maybe especially within the vegan movement or maybe especially just maybe in Fitness or something maybe is thinking of some other I guess that's true the fitness youtubers they make an e-book or they say giving Skype coaching in it they call themselves nightmare ok once in awhile people using that word as its maybe cringe-worthy but what about the people who really are entrepreneurs or people who really aspire to be people who are studying hard and working here because that's that's really how they they see their their career path and what the reason I mention this though is the really sort of snide undercurrent which I think prevents a lot of people from even thinking through what it means to be an intellectual whether or not something they aspired to be in the past or present or future because for a lot of people it's maybe selling you toyed with as a teenager and that's something you come back to later in life when you have some more some more time and leisure or something after a period of desperately trying to make rent money um you know this this culture that exists on the Internet and to some extent in real life of you know kind of denigrating people for any any pretensions you know they may have and on the other side of that you know ok look we've all seen movies that depict people who have ridiculous potential pardon me people are ridiculous pretensions have become the butt of the joke you know in the movie and what have you but having ambition and having the vulnerability to say openly that you have that ambition you know whatever it is you know it's it's not such a terrible thing for someone to want to be a poet you know should they really be the butt of every joke and you know at the same time there are so many pretension it's in our society we're all supposed to take you know so tremendously seriously I'm no white American culture is like that the idea of the dream and don't don't puncture something so on there are certain forms of I don't know affected innocence you know with being a dreamer that are that are surely valorized and protected and there are others that are always kind of you know the blood of Ashoka's oh so look just just to dispense with that that example you know briefly when I say I was an autodidact in learning lotion the Lao language I mean I had no teacher I had no school I had no college I went to the library I you know in some cases I did in effect like make my own resources and textbooks I can remember going to one library where they had photocopies of handouts that were used in United Nations refugee camps you know for the language education materials and looking at that you know okay what's useful here and French colonial dictionaries dictionaries the language in the French colonial period you know lotion to French and then figuring out the writing system had changed from that period to the modern period and figuring out how the spelling system worked and documents from different eras I I was a an autodidact than every possible sense of the word maybe you know for you maybe 40 cat watching this or someone's watch this you know maybe you think it's a joke for someone to call themselves you know an autodidact maybe sometimes it is ridiculous when people call themselves a cowboy you know okay but what about when we're talking about people who actually wear that hat or wear spurs on their boots for for a reason you know at some point the kind of endless cycle of I mean undermining other people's you know ambitions that's real we're talking not pretensions but ambitions you know to no end at some at some point it has to stop at some point we have to start living in earnest and living without you know really irony for the sake of irony you know I say this as someone who certainly you know certainly enjoys I used to joke that you know irony is a force as inevitable as irresistible as gravity in the universe well there are I laugh at myself a great deal you know than others at least at least here on YouTube from time to time but yeah there's a real question earnest of what does it mean to be an intellectual so I asked my girlfriend listed I think her perspective this is totally so I want to say right at the start of the video one of the six or so disjointed thoughts about this is very sincere and for me once when Steve I think part of being an intellectual is being perpetually profoundly dissatisfied with your own ignorance and then being perpetually profoundly dissatisfied with the ignorance of your own society the rule of ignorance in the shaping of and and functioning of your own society and that may or may not exhibit itself in a in a really directly political way there's something almost inevitably socio-political there's some kind of social commentary or social critique that's going to come out of that but you sir you know this about me the way that I'm constantly aware of my own ignorance and gaps in my knowledge and I you know I I it's not that I'm self censoring but whenever I say things to you that's really outside of my area of expertise or it's based on one thing either I say look this is only based on one or two things I've read it or this is whatever the there's a self critical aspect of being aware of the limits of my of my own ignorance and struggling against them sincerely you know again it's not a joke it's not it's not ironic it's not a meme or it's not the kind of you know muck that the internet seems to break it of really sincerely struggling like you know when I just finally read about the history of the English Civil War when will I get a chance to study half the things I feel I need to study in that in that kind of struggle and then holding I think holding oneself to that standard you know inevitably leads to social frustrations because you live in a society where people still we can use any example but people still literally cut the foreskin off of baby's penis to act out a ritual you know in the Old Testament you know it's ridiculous there were a thousand possible examples of the absurdities in our sight once you're of that character where you hold yourself to that higher standard and you struggle with with your own ignorance yeah well I don't know if this is really answering your question I was reminded of somebody from my high school and in a way he had the same ambition to fill in the gaps of his knowledge and like he really was earnest in trying to be a painter oh yeah yeah his paintings were and to be a poet I think he just was an artist and generally his artistic type and he he at one point was trying to be a rapper like yeah so I mean but he was like really you know earnest and all of these ambitions and it was a dream when people would like make fun of him or something cuz he was just it didn't bother him he was so confident that he could just you know just brush it off and continue with whatever he was working on but you know for somebody for somebody else that is it is hard to see that that drive being made fun of yeah and I think that is a problem in our society as as as compared to the way he would have been received he was putting ambitions into playing football yes what is into just playing video games or exactly running money or joining the army er but yeah I think I think at the root of you know this particular example and also you know for me to it is just a dis I'd expect dissatisfaction with society and feeling like like and also just dissatisfaction with your own level of knowledge on any topic you know Lobos gonna say you know you're mentioning I think you know a stereotype of intellectuals which it makes sense but falls apart under examination being intellectuals is completely separate from being an artist you know I think if any one positive thing about it's obvious but you know is Harvey Weinstein an intellectual there there are all kinds of examples of artists who are not intellectuals or people devoted their lives to creative arts whether it's painting or filmmaking or music or what-have-you and their non-intellectual so it can't be that it has anything to do with being a vegan artist did you say there - several things I totally see you can be an intellectual and for that reason you know you're in the arts yeah you can be an intellectual for that reason you're a scholar or a researcher there are all kind of things you might put that impulse into but I think that's that's missing sort of mistake number one at a show level um there's a you know I think that the misconception I grew up with was was just idea that because someone is left-wing because someone's a political activist therefore they're an intellectual and again I think that's that's misleading in the same sort of way someone may be an intellectual and then for that reason they get involved with some political cause or another but of course what I was gonna learn in life starting as a child was that the vast majority of people who were left-wing in Canada is white it crispy gonna we're not intellectuals I would say the majority of them learned to kind of pass themselves off as intellectuals when necessary to have some of the affectations because politically it is more fashionable for the left-wing to to pretend if intellectuals then it is for conservatives or the far-right wing or something but again these are really two two very separate things so look for you coming up I don't think this has been a question you know you've you've had to answer and you know I mean you didn't grow up in a family where you were expected to be an intellectual you weren't educated educational as where there's any question of anything intellectual you know pattern of history we're talking about that we're going on yes but it's not that easy to pin down what we really mean by yeah yeah when I would sometimes certain people when I would tell them that I was getting my my undergraduate in English this that I wanted to be a creative writer they sumo writes write novels yeah and they kind of scoffed at that but yeah that wasn't ever my intention was was getting the degree and I had to just explain no no I'm not I don't not a poet write books or if I did write a book it would be a nonfiction so anyway that that was my once I got into college it became more of a morning in my life but no I wasn't expected to be an intellectual I was just supposed to perform well in school get good grades so that I could go to a good college and start a good career and make money work that was really the goal in in learning Brahmin learning to be right somebody who could support themselves well we just talked about for like the 10th time this year Aristotle's philosophy of education - so I lectured repeatedly in China but though Aristotle education the university classes I was teaching so now I was just reading the the primary source again and I mean aerosol has this idea of that well it's similar to the much used phrase during here that the unexamined life is not not worth living but he points out that the purpose of Education in his view is not any particular skill or ability it's not earning money it's not winning competitions the ultimate purpose of Education is the enjoyment of leisure you know I'll come back and say a little bit more about what do you mean about leisure that's what comes up in this situation but you get this sense this isn't this part isn't that directly argued that by becoming more and more educated you're in effect using your leisure at a higher and higher level of refinement or quality or sophistication and that that is the purpose of education but you know the actual Greek term used for for leisure is Scully and he explains himself when he says leisure he doesn't mean playing games she doesn't mean wasting time he doesn't mean relaxing you know when he when he it explains a moderate length that when he talks about leisure we talk about something that fundamentally you know expands your mind but um I would say again what what Aristotle's describing is not being an intellectual and it's very significant when he illustrates this so the main example we have him discussing at length is the significance of the study of music melissa spent many years studying music yeah and he sets down look when you from Aristotle's perspective when you study music it should only be basically you're learning to play instruments in order to increase your appreciation of music exercise your soul and what have you he says you should never gain any technical skill in music you should never participate in competitions you should never perform perform before an audience to become a professional because then he says you'll be perverted by trying to trying to impress the crowd this is also interesting being intellectual right the idea of the intellectual is not that it's someone like a stand-up comedian doing whatever will make the audience laugh that it's not you know an intellectual maybe a stand-up comedian or maybe a filmmaker or something but that they're not doing something commercial they're not doing what for the audience yeah but worried about it but what are they doing it for it's very easy to say that negatively oh this isn't for the audience right right but then what is it for is lowered so you know I was taught that anything like that would be a waste of time you know just doing something I when I learned to play music the first thing that I did was performing in front of an audience and petition solo competition right also you know competing to get to the top chair competing just with other schools like our whole Orchestra would be competing in schools there Aristotle would be flabbergasted indeed you know the main goal was to learn technique so that is that is interesting too and like just a word thing for so you know that this is part of the founding idea of the Olympics also I've pointed this out to you before the Olympics became commercialized was that it was not supposed to be competition to professionals but between amateurs the idea of the gentlemen Ammar this ran through European philosophy of what it meant to be an aristocrat partly drawing on Aristotle probably on things the idea that the aristocrat is the sort of ultimate dilettante he doesn't become a great painter or a great musician but he's a patron of all the Arts he learns them all to some extent he appreciates them all soon as that you know he can play the violin but he doesn't you know he's not a journeyman you know musician or something this idea of self cultivation but you know yeah but we're meaning a dilettante never going throw and never become a commercial insult right that's that's a big part of the European tradition partly directly as a result of Aristotle yeah I mean I know the topic of this video is not about music education but that is the trend that I saw when growing out that you know it's this big focus on competing and performing the best but then one typically most students when they're done with high school they never pick up their instruments again that's right and they don't use it in this dilettante way okay but look this is also true of our education in biology or education and math for most of us you never pick up a biology book ever biology isn't now put assume that gets that the question of what is the function of Education etc etc right yeah yeah nicely but but the definition I proposed at the start of this video too I think it is possible to be an intellectual within biology or within the pure sciences or whatever you know I think you'd be applying the same underlying profound dissatisfaction to critique of what's going on in you know the establishment of biomedical research or you know and obviously to your own for your frustrations with your own with your own ignorance or what have you then having that that play out in one way or another yeah so look um you know in what context in 2018 would anyone even describe themselves as an intellectual so I mean almost the only time this comes up in my life now is the people and the internet and people who are really not even a position to say this telling me that I'm not I'd say that you're right see this this kind of insult and you know I mean sir but in what context where I even say that I am one like how old can he even come up in our society I mean sorry autodidact is different I still don't know you know I taught myself this language I became a scholar in this field or that field with you no no no no outside source of authority or formal education I sure being an autodidact comes up and normally it's kind of a bad thing as opposed to being a formally credential person in the field without you you know um I know sorry not all fields mad I decree in a jib way I formally studied create a chip away at a university in Canada I there was a chalkboard there were exams that completely formal education in that field so we don't have all my credentials that created it would but it wasn't some fields I wasn't on at that act but in saying you know that I'm an intellectual look this came up totally different type of conversation but you know when I look at people like durianrider or people like Joe best living in Thailand Laos Cambodia and someone I've said in passing you know I don't really judge these guys by their their sex lives I'm not that sex negative you know but from my perspective they're scumbags just because of the life they're living of their you know period you know not it's not that I think they should be living in celibacy it's not that I would respect their lives if they were doing the same thing but but it but in celibacy for me sex is not the issue there and when I was living there you know I did ride a bicycle I you know I live the life in some ways on the surface that was similar but I was literally riding my bicycle from the archives to the gym I mean you know I was working out now I've had a bicycle I was doing manuscript research historical research political research I can say humanitarian research I was actively applying for jobs the Amanah terrian field if you're not rich if you don't have money to put in the table spend a lot more time looking for humanitarian work than doing it and I mean again at all this time there was this deep you know dissatisfaction so I mean look even within I mean I can give give a long list of examples but you know um I remember was talking to another actually this guy was a journalist but I could say another researcher about the history of the the French Empire in that part of the world and he disagreed with something I had written something I published and the claim was actually about what happened in the land battles of a certain period of France conquering and trying to control that part of the world and he said no no this you know this isn't this isn't true you know what's on and I said oh well how do you know and I was able to say very readily how I knew what I knew and and asked about it and I remember he had he had the honesty to just say he realized only after I challenged him that actually all of his sources were French government propaganda he said wow you know what I've actually never seen anything written from the lotion perspective or the Thai perspective and he just folded he realized that you know what there was a difference there so look you know as absurd as it sounds not only is it possible to work in something like the academic study of history and not be an agate and not be an intellectual it's common it's not just possible to do humanitarian work in Laos and not be an intellectual the vast majority are not it's not you know it's not just possible to be an artist and not be an intellectual you know the vast majority are so we're looking for we're looking for the trait making the trade you know what is the trade that makes someone make someone to lecture well this is my my way of putting it now I did I made a couple other notes I mean you know okay so we haven't forgot about this I mean the other question I raised this comes up in all kinds of contexts is the issue of not making excuses for yourself and I mean this is almost you're saying the same thing but inside out that you're not making excuses your self and you're not making excuses for others I think that's what it what it leads to you know no it was me so you know if you get an a-plus in history you can get an a-plus repeating complete mythology about history you know I mean you can you can just get an a-plus ok let's let's pick a not too vaca t'v we were talking recently about Thomas Jefferson you know so you can write a hit you can get an A+ in high school University saying that Thomas Jefferson was the greatest president United States what about First Nations what about American Indians what about the indigenous people I mean I think exactly the point is you know do not make excuses of yourself you not make the society you live it if you're a real intellectual you're not going to be satisfied with reading a textbook that just says Thomas Jefferson is the greatest president for reasons explained said or even writing your essay repeating this kind of this kind of propaganda and getting a plus you are never be gonna have that that dissatisfaction you're gonna hold yourself to a higher standard and then when you find out that other side of the story now you're gonna be looking at your history professor you can be looking at your school you gonna be looking at the political system in the country of living and you're gonna be you're gonna be holding it to a higher standard also it's it's that you're not making excuses for yourself and you're maybe not accepting the socially sanctioned or socially celebrated excuses that that exist you know and so I think this is one of them where do you think that comes from how can you expect a kid who goes through education the same education system as parents that don't really emphasize ya know look it's it's a great question well I don't have an answer you know we heard a totally laughable character in mentem we didn't have that clip on Shelby he broke down at one point and he just said that's why I can never be happy it was in the middle of him ranting look but look i mean ii think that's that's part of it I mean I think part of it is you need I think part of it is character you know Schopenhauer likes to say villain on disk Atari can't teach wanting I mean part of it is like you know being rapacious being uncompromising do their head then and being very frustrated and unhappy if you can just believe this sanctioned myth like everyone else if you can just go on eating yogurt and believing Thomas Jefferson was a great man and you're not questioning well what about slavery and the extinction of indigenous peoples in their languages and forced assimilation so well yeah thank you but you know maybe there is a kind of happiness but it's exactly that character of the unexamined life is not worth living and getting out in examine right right yeah I guess this snores yeah more explicitly the excuse making right I mean that's [ __ ] middle-aged in a nutshell I know you have your comfort blanket of excuses wrapped around you at all times yeah it's true yeah jurors are normally seen as more inclined to be intellectual leaders haven't gotten used to you know the excuse me right well I remember like as a teen you know as an adolescent teenager being very dissatisfied very unhappy but I don't I didn't use that in a positive way in this way you know I put my focus in into you know performing while in school and you know that was that was really how that energy was put forward but yeah I mean look I think you know I think there's another question of law but you didn't become an intellectual I'm sorry I'm in this no reality if you're gonna examine intellectual what's starting now I mean I think that's the other thing implicitly here I mean sir I mean you warrant intellectuals a teenager Noren University no I mean yeah I think that's one of the questions I'd ask is is it possible to be an intellectual and be a conformist and I think you know depending on which society you're looking at the answer might be yes but you know in almost any society we're talking about it's inevitable that being a intellectual at least you're being a nonconformist because as soon as you start asking these kinds of questions as soon as you become this kind of uncompromising character you say wow this is full society is built on lies this this society is built on calm Mises I can't make I can't / you become this kind of irascible figure I mean it is a little bit like Socrates as image of the gadfly but the problem is with sergeant's image the gadfly bites the horse and I'm pointing out the intellect you bite yourself you know much more than your your discomfort it's it's your own misery it's your own discomfort you know on a very very fundamental level yeah but you know if you live in a in a radically better society than the one we live like alumina site that's not built on genocide and lies it with genocide that's not built on people eating yogurt and yogurt and cutting the penises sorry cutting the foreskins off the penises of babies if it's not built in all these ridiculous lesser but even even if the United States in your generation I'm you know your whole life the United States has been at war with countries most people can't spell properly there's been constant war the most meaningless unforgivable kind and that you know that stuff bothered me deeply you know Candace involvement everything else you know let me start people talk about the Vietnam generation your generation is the Afghanistan and you know Iraq generation some people may just care less but I mean you know that those those questions the ethical issues raised sorry look I just tell you honestly but I mean I remember I this is also part of being intellectual that I did the research I was incredibly disturbed the first time I read about the United States use of depleted uranium as as a shielding both as bullets and as armor you know in in war that was incredibly you know disturbing to me now I did research on it obviously not that much research so I'm not a chemist or something but I looked into why the army was using that and I realized look you know even though this has some unbelievably negative ecological side effects you know what I'd make the same decision because it's about saving lives you know it's about you know ultimately stopping a bullet that's gonna go through a tank or something you know you know I just say that sometimes that that same distant section but still I can remember my sense of horror that started me looking into that you know did you have like some like didn't you have somebody that you could emulate this so go on it's great question like I thought the way to better myself or you know like wrote it to be I don't know how to say this without sounding like cocky or something but like to be to prove to other people that I was more intelligent than that I was like I'm gonna work my ass off and get into the best school in the state and stuff like I didn't know that I could put the energy into something else and I think my life probably would have been better you know I'd give you a gonna kiss beside the table you know anyway yeah I'm just saying yeah yeah no look I mean no role models no no it's it's look it's it's a great topic I mean in some ways it's the shallowest thing in the world you know what what does this label mean you know to be an intellectual or you know and I'm asking this at a time in 2018 when almost nobody uses the label and when it is laughed at so you know um sam Harris has tried to revive the label and talks about the intellectual dark web and the summit it is laughable it is worth scoffing at it is worth ridicule you know it's true I mean like you know you say are you wearing a cowboy hat because you're actually at cowboy were you you know is it dressed up for Halloween some people are real intellectuals and some are not yeah you know and it's really interesting to get down to the question of what that what that mark is sure right but I mean you know what can I say no I didn't have these we'll talk a little bit more about that but I mean you know sure other traits you have to have is that you're you know you're not easily impressed you're not easily overwhelmed that you don't you know sign up for the kind of excuses and half-truths right no people are giving you yeah right like I mean well I knew what was kids didn't even like read the textbooks right so like I was like no I'm gonna sit down and read this freaking textbook I'm gonna read all the books that are assigned yeah but and said the camera but you never almost ever went to the library and got other got other sources that challenged the textbook no no who didn't get sources that prove the textbook was wrong I didn't that's what I did but that's but that's what I did that's what I did even in theater even when I was in the theater and studying studying acting and plays and you know sorry I mean not politics not directly of course I was only interested in it because of politics I was getting books out of the library that challenged what was being taught in the classroom independent textbook yeah there's a different approach of it you know yeah even for that so of course you know I'm looking at whatever the history of Japan I mean oh a certain movement that starts with a simple question so people talk about the history of Japan but nobody wants to talk about that Japan used to have another Island that's now part of Russia you know what's what's being covered up there well it turns out I discovered this whole massacre of this whole history history going back more than 300 years that's really interesting and that really took but nobody taught me that that wasn't it and it's X for granular I mean nothing you know so I mean that's that's just me being dissatisfied with what is being taught and looking out you know for that stuff and you know sorry when I did the history of Paul there's a strike it's it's it's a it's an obvious example but but it's also worth mentioning I met a man who was born and raised in Sri Lanka he was Hindu and even though he was a critic of the caste system so this is caste cas de caste system is a system of ethnic and economic inequality it's it's hard to but it's similar to my part aid or what have you but it's a traditional form of of both racism and classism in Indian culture so this guy I met he lived his whole life in Sri Lanka and he was very much aware of the caste system within Hinduism and when I started talking about the caste system within within Buddhism within tera vaada Buddhism in showing he was just shocked and he looked at me and he said but there is no caste system within us yeah yeah well I was involved in Buddhism that might be a lie lots of you that's like saying there's no racism then Buddhism but it's but it's a very particular form of racism that really exists and really as history in-depth and they can prove the existence I was never the kind of person who you say oh that's good news you know clothes no I'm someone who sees that and says something wrong I'm not so much so I mean Thailand was very proud that they had no slavery and no caste system and of course if you really study the history of Thailand you find out exactly about their history of slavery you know yeah so I mean you know we find it up brutal and terrible history was like oh that's good news so history of Thailand equals good history of Europe equals bad case closed no you know we rolled sri lanka equals good india equals bet no you know soon with any of those things with no prompting and no role model there's this dissatisfaction with my own ignorance dissatisfaction with the role of ignorance what I'm seeing and that you know that leads me you know I'm not saying I didn't grow up with wise you know that they realized that I I think it probably took me a longer time to tell that they were lies then you know you grew up with what the Communists you family you know communist parents and from what you said it sounds like from a young age you could decipher that these were just ridiculous statements and I mean I guess maybe that's part of it like I'm not not trusting and what you hear because yeah I think I think I was programmed to to trust in what I and and think that what I'm what I'm being taught is right you see me just in the last couple of days even with Aristotle you know there's a real sense which I'm not believing what the translator tells me or I'm not you know what I mean you've seen the way I'll get the source right I find another article and then this guy's kind of lying about some things don't you yeah you've seen the way even with something as mainstream as philosophy of Aristotle I'm kind of interrogating the text although I'm questioning what does the author really mean and to what extent is this being misrepresented by the translator or this or what have you so you know I'm like that you know all the time things yeah look see you know you you would so she mentioned I was raised by Communists but I'm not Dominus but my parents certainly raised me to be a communist and I rejected that um I think there is something to be said when you grow up with one set of values or one set of truth claims being propounded inside the home and then you see them being refuted outside the home again again I think that does have a certain effect on people and the vast majority people even use grow up Muslim or Catholic you know in the Western world grow up with that I'm sorry but look just let's say you grow up in Los Angeles and your parents tell you that nobody should have sex before marriage yeah it's shallow but it's deep at the same time right you grow up with seeing that Carter's I don't think that makes you into an intellectual I don't think it's the same yeah impetus variables I mean I think there's something there worth talking about I do you know me yeah yes maybe it makes you into a nihilist maybe it makes you into a relativist you know maybe there's some kind of making question but wouldn't solve the values inside the household and the values outside of the household being incompatible or one feeding there I think that's a major part of the modern experience you know that wasn't part of the feudal medieval experience but even just people who grew up with mainstream Muslim parents or conservative Catholic parents you know it's it's not just communists who grow up with that you say wow you know so my father thinks Joe my father thought Joseph Stalin was a great guy my mother has literally said that she regarded Mao Zedong massacring people and Tibet was a good thing you know that's what's inside the household and then even just what you see on newspapers or what your school teachers say or something's going but I don't think that makes you you know yeah but I guess I guess the importance of it is that it makes you skeptical like and having somebody that has his influence on you to be skeptical it could lead to wait to that train but my parents were not teaching me to be skeptical yeah things that they were teaching me to be Dominic yeah that's I said before I said I could say a little bit more about it but I mean okay I said earlier that being left-wing or even being just hyper political be someone who cares a lot about politics doesn't make you an intellectual I would here combine that with the fact that being an expert doesn't make you intellectual so in Laos Southeast Asia but this could be this could be anywhere this could be in Canada's commitment you know if you're an expert in sewage treatment you know you're an expert in pipes and plumbing you can do great work all over the world in humanitarian the humanitarian sector refugee camps third world countries need this kind of export and I dealt with exports in a million fields or millions but in many fields that you know but you know you can meet someone who's an x-ray technician doing humanitarian work but you can also meet people you meet someone who's an expert in like physics and they're like yeah they're there you know they would normally be Germans they say yeah they decided to come out Southeast Asia and really help the university in a third world country and prove their teaching of physics and their physics person I met many people doing that okay but being an expert is very often dogmatic those people will come to Laos and they say hey I know I know the true physics I know the true way to teach physics I'm an expert in the science of physics I'm here to show you that someday and they may genuinely know they know sewage treatment and they're here to show you the right way to set up your sewage tree and so on so I'm not using super culturally relativistic examples here right but they're not there to learn they're not there to question they're not going to do any of the the don't or self-doubt I've described right sorry I mean something individually you may need one who's who's an intellectual but being an expert that way if anything tends to dogmatic thinking and you know preaching out of this kind of certainty and not what a proposing here is being the main issue of having this you know self-critical mentality that leads to being critical and I would say that is very much the attitude of hardcore left-wingers communists socialists are just dogmatic left-wing people they feel that they are an expert in the suffering of the poor of revolution economics a lot of them feel they're expert and they know something but economics they know something about political conditions and you know progressive politics and then they're just dogmatically informing other people of what that is you know yeah it's not going to be the same kind of self-criticism and social criticism the same kind of deep dissatisfaction with your own ignorance and the rule of ignorance around you yeah and you know I think that look I mean like my parents model what it with the ideal of being a left winger was to basically be bourgeois the member of the you know not to be poor yeah but then to go out and organize labor unions to go on strike for this this was their model obviously it goes it's really from the 1930s or earlier it's a totally different idea the world the idea is that there are these poor ignorant laborers who are working in factories and and mines who have a much lower level of education than you do and what you need to do is go out there and inform them they're oppressed they're sold rest they don't even realize they're oppressed and you organize them into a revolt or a revolution our general strike or what or what have you right and look I mean when I was in Laos I was learning all the time when I was dealing with the Karina jib way and someone - it's like you know that's that's why I say I wasn't trying to convert those people to veganism you know what I mean like you know I'm not here - I'm not arriving here as an expert you know to deliver the you know I'm not delivering you the the gospel of something I'm certain in and devoted and committed to you know I'm I'm really there was an intellectual and they were knowing you know self-doubt I met sorry this this was an example I didn't appreciate that well at the time I met a young woman and I think she was getting her PhD in social geography so all-purpose social science and she said that you know they did a unit looking at prostitution in I think Thailand and Laos in that in that region and all of them they were all female says a lot of a lot of social sciences are a majority female but she said all the all the graduate students were female and they came into class having done the reader came into the seminar and they were all kind of starting off the seminar saying oh this is you know this is an obscenity this is a humanitarian disaster this is terrible situation of prostitution and gentlemen's and so each of them got to speak brief another professor said okay now we're going to do a comparison everyone get out of blank sheet of paper we're gonna put up you know wipe the wipe the chalkboard clean each of the things you just complained about is it better or worse in Thailand than it is in Germany in fact all of them were ashamed by the end of it because exactly the things they've complained about they actually had to accept that the situation was war by their own criteria they had been hypocrites and the situation was actually worse in Germany this entire man now look I mean at the time I didn't really see the end I thought that this way I didn't kind of get it when you think about it deeply this is again this is kind of the missionary mentality versus you know really being an intellectual really questioning because it should we need a question I mean you know being in Thailand led me to question you know a things about my own society things about my own assumptions things about what do I know and what do I not know you know I mean I think that is the point is exactly to be always living on that productive razor's edge of doubt where you no doubt becomes a cutting tool to cutting to cut away at your own ignorance and cut away at the false assumptions of the society you live in that you've been raised in and so on and you know we all we all become sharper thereby I think that's you know I think that is the difference I'm sure within her ph.d program some people were intellectuals and some we're not or became intellectuals and you know again within the theater within within any field of research you know then I feel the politics of the Arts not everyone is gonna be an intellectual yeah I get what you're saying yeah kind of being an expert you get blinders on you don't think of the big picture you just think on one topic in particular and it's it's kind of one directional expertise it comes from the experts yeah I'd say also you know I'm thinking of a CBC documentary I heard of the aura interview was but you know I think that another kind of false symptom Oh up being intellectual I think one of the things it's emphasized more in some cultures than others one of the concepts being intellectual is that you're not motivated by money and China's like this the idea that if your intellectual you you live in poverty in ancient ancient Athens was like this to some extent different cultures to different extents that you know and again this comes back to well if you if you're in the theater is it commercial is it for the audience if you're paying a painter are you a commercial painter you can be a purely commercial but you can be an illustrator you know drawing Batman comics you know because Batman pays you a lot better than this kind of thing I think again that's actually really a false you know there's some overlap there but that doesn't make unity the fact that you're not motivated by money or the fact that what you produce as a researcher as an artist as a writer as a political activist because again one of the things is you could just be an intellectual or just be directly trying to change the world through politics the fact that it doesn't make money I think it's utterly unrelated to whether or not you're intellectually and whether your role in society is being above mine as well and if it does make money if it happens to I think that's I think that's also doesn't it doesn't put it this way it does not invalidate your claim to be an intellectual if you happen to have made a lot of money out of doing whatever it is you're doing so I think that's really that's really profoundly unrelated but you know I mean this goes back even to Socrates and so on where part of his he literally stood there defending his life in court and parted with a big deal was I didn't do this for money you know I wasn't you know I'm doing this I'm doing this to awaken Athens from its slumber I'm doing this to make men question what is virtue right you know what is the meaning of life and then to motivate them to be better people and for our society to be a better society that's his defense of himself was I never accepted I never accepted payment for this right yeah so we will see we will see if life makes it hypocrite at me but you know we'll see if I manage to combine being a baker with being an intellectual I mean well I mean there's gonna be a lot of reasons are going to be a lot of excuses to not spend time you know researching things independently yeah and sorry I mean like a this is like a personal note but I guess I do want to sorry I keep going back to this like idea because like you know the making excuses thing I think it was partly like how you know you know my I guess the biggest influence of skepticism was was my dad because of he he was never actually um like he would cook he would go to church but he didn't want to right you would criticize what I was learning in school saying it was it was liberal but he never provided an alternative you know like so and also like you know I'm almost like pretty ultra conformist type of person so like so it kind of made this this this ideal for me is like to be questioning but still conform you know like like inside then you'll have these doubts but just on the outside conform and don't you know just don't let it influence you so it was like you know I didn't have that extra push so I do think that it's that is important to have some some kind of like alternative and anyway sorry I mean I know this is kind of off topic how I'm ending this but like no I think what do you mean by alternative I mean I think that's the tragedy of being intellectual right exactly most of the time there there is no alternative I mean you don't have an alternative to your school system you don't turn it to your political system or what have you like any often in the position of just criticizing this plenty of what's wrong with it you know it's funny about how terrible it is that people still circumcise their children yes he's all still yogurt and so on right right you don't you know I mean you know some a I think that's yeah I think that's part of it um is that you know it's it may be largely or entirely destructive you know yeah but I do think it's important to continue doing that if we do if we do become bakers and that becomes our full-time jobs well look i think that this comes back to the theme of people kind of ridiculing one another for being intellectuals or seeming to be the were calling themselves intellectuals you know our aims in life or extrinsic but they're regarded as intrinsic by others they're regarded as your identity so you know you bake bread for a living so you are a baker and then there were all these assumptions about that who you are what you're doing so on you know you've seen that I mean my my a sensible job has changed from one month to the next familiar I have been a professor and if you want to say that if you wanna say oh I'm a professor at a university in China that may suggest certain things about you and you know there was a time when I told people well I am you know involved with First Nations languages Korean a jib way and this is what I'm studying at these the projects I'm trying to do and there was another time when I was doing humanitarian work and you know the other time when I introduced myself to people and they said what are you doing I said well I've been doing research on stone inscriptions and palm leaf manuscripts in this ancient dead language you know I mean the so these these are these are aims they're extrinsic they're created by fleeting bizarre circumstances you know that come and go but who I am and what drives me as an intellectual has utterly you know remain the same yeah right and your reading isn't your intellectual pursuits aren't governed by what your what your goals for making money are leaner like or any money whatever your career was at the time your but you you we're reading on the side things completely unrelated or well right am i reading also wasn't limited the way yours was by the courses I took into God like you you're reading up on Greek literature and you about the English Civil War you know you're not intended to go into the history of England that's right classics well that's right but but on the other hand I'm also a my money that's right and it's normal to be more money but it's also true that I'm not satisfied with what aerosol describes as being a dilettante with just you know you know to only learning right only learning to play the lute enough to be gratified by the sound of its music you know what I mean like that's that's what Aristotle's about is just you know so and you know yeah I'm mad you say yeah I really admire that and I think there's a subset of people that do admire that but I think the more people would think about it in more realistic terms and think that you're wasting time or you know what's the point and ultimately you have to you have to make it worth it you have to make a point right okay but look okay so I'm gonna give to transfer that and I'm gonna hit the stop button you yeah so what is the point one answer you know you virtually before on this YouTube channel the point is who I am the point is who you want to be and who you want to become right and on some level we all know that I mean it's shallow and it's deep at the same time like what you read and what you care about and what kind of difference trying to make in the world these things they become who you are and you become them in a very real sense if you sit on the couch and watch football and drink beer after work you become a sitting on the couch football watching [ __ ] that's and you are there's nothing you can't put that aside so no that's not who I really am that's just yeah you can't say that's not who I really am that's just what I do in my in my free time no that is that is who you are right or you could say your free time is exactly yes yes that's right well I think that's also what haunts intellectuals right I think that's that's what I want seen so I mean you know I mean why why try to learn Cree it's not like that today can speak the Korean language fluently why try to learn Chinese and why even within that why I care about Chinese politics and history in the kind of critical way that I do well guess what I get to be me you know like that's the final outcome is that that you know it's not that this is something I do that this is you know this is who I am yeah and you know the other you know shallower question is this kind of reading this kind of inquiry self-criticism of you how do you make it productive how do you show others we've talked about that recently where I said hey you know what instead of like instead of just reading a book you can read three books and then you know read some articles about them put together an article you know write an article put it on the internet so you're taking reading you're making reading productive yeah and maybe five other people are gonna see that article I mean you're reading books you're taking notes on them you're making a youtube video discussing them maybe fifty people see that video but I mean you know there are ways to make the reading productive and there are ways to take your own conclusions out of the seclusion of an intellectual and subject them to the criticism and feedback of others which you know for it depends on your personality type for some people that's very important because if they don't have that they're gonna end up you know in a echo chamber of their own you know delusions there for some people it's report for other people I think less so depends on how effective your how effectively your self-critical or what-have-you but sure instead of I'm you know is it is it accumulating knowledge for the sake of you my knowledge I don't think the effect is really cumulative in that way I may that's a misleading way to describe it for that reason but then you know yes you could make it productive in both senses it is productive it tragically intellect ibly escape it's productive because ultimately the product is you and then on the other hand there are ways to make reading productive there's ways to make learning productive as an intellectual activity productive and what you see now on YouTube what you see now on my blog in my publications and so on those are examples of how we try to happen if you want to ask me a questions you know one our answer to a question that I think was one sentence long from from James support the channel for $1 a month on patreon write to me I'll probably write back or you may be horrified to have an hour-long video show off [Music]