I think many people in this world mistake certain attributes of personality or quirks of history for intelligence or quality of character.
Personally, I think anger and scorn are probably the most frequently mistaken for intelligence. Many of my favorite people and heroes have undoubtedly contributed to this: Hunter S. Thompson, Warren Ellis, Harlan Ellison. ESPECIALLY Harlan Ellison. Genius author that he may be, I think many of his fans and others who seek to emulate him forget one key thing: Harlan is always loud, but being loud does not always make Harlan right. No matter how angry and scornful you are, deriding someone effectively does not make them wrong. It just makes you a jerkass. Now, you can be a funny jerkass, and you may even be right, but your rightness is independent of how you present it.
There also seems to be a highly prevalent belief that outrage - no matter how disproportionate or ill-thought-out - is the primary sign of having a social conscience. This extends through the ranks of hippies, punks, left wing, right wing, feminists, socialists, capitalists; it spares no social group, though some are admittedly more prone to it than others.
Come on, you know you've seen them: the people who are always pissed off at some violation of rights, at some percieved slight due to social class or ethnicity, who refer (with a straight face) to the 'ruling class' of the United States while they themselves are probably part of that very class? And then, decrying the unjustness of oppression of their hated foes, demand that those foes be silenced/killed/mutilated on the altar of public opinion, and never sense the irony in their own statements?
I want to have
beatonna's head babies. This reminded me of psychik - at least the Lenin part did:
And this is just funny.
Personally, I think anger and scorn are probably the most frequently mistaken for intelligence. Many of my favorite people and heroes have undoubtedly contributed to this: Hunter S. Thompson, Warren Ellis, Harlan Ellison. ESPECIALLY Harlan Ellison. Genius author that he may be, I think many of his fans and others who seek to emulate him forget one key thing: Harlan is always loud, but being loud does not always make Harlan right. No matter how angry and scornful you are, deriding someone effectively does not make them wrong. It just makes you a jerkass. Now, you can be a funny jerkass, and you may even be right, but your rightness is independent of how you present it.
There also seems to be a highly prevalent belief that outrage - no matter how disproportionate or ill-thought-out - is the primary sign of having a social conscience. This extends through the ranks of hippies, punks, left wing, right wing, feminists, socialists, capitalists; it spares no social group, though some are admittedly more prone to it than others.
Come on, you know you've seen them: the people who are always pissed off at some violation of rights, at some percieved slight due to social class or ethnicity, who refer (with a straight face) to the 'ruling class' of the United States while they themselves are probably part of that very class? And then, decrying the unjustness of oppression of their hated foes, demand that those foes be silenced/killed/mutilated on the altar of public opinion, and never sense the irony in their own statements?
I want to have
beatonna's head babies. This reminded me of psychik - at least the Lenin part did:And this is just funny.