Intellectual Discrimination: Protest groups forming now.

Intellectual Discrimination

Living in a conservative Bible-belt region when I uttered the above phrase I was quickly questioned about its political correctness. Can discrimination ever be a good thing? Isn't espousing intellectualism an elitist stance? Is combining the two some sort of insult?

My utterance of the phrase was in fact a statement of criticism.

"One of the problems with our current social situation is a lack of intellectual discrimination."

A great portion of our population appears to have stopped thinking critically. Who, in their right mind, would accept even a third of the rhetoric offered in the last political campaign. Yet there are those today who believe the half truths and innuendos put forth by radical propogandists.

In a recent conversation with an acquaintance I was impressed with the two-dimensional approach she was taking in putting forth her issues of concern. Citing the inequity of CEO and Chairperson salaries in light of government bail-out plans that involved her hard earned tax dollars. She touched momentarily on a number of hot-button topics but neglected to in any way connect the dots of real economic mechanics.

I believe this 2-D approach to opinion formation is a direct result of herd mentality coupled with a sound-bite perspective of issues. People, who's lives are already to complex, simply want to have answers that they can feel good about. Nothing legitimizes an opinion like a shared view by a group of your peers or congregation members or softball team mates. Distilled sound bites offered by authoritative mouthpieces replace personal discernment. In a 'do you want fries with that political perspective' it is much easier to take some "expert's" position than to develop one of our own.

It turns out that Intellectual Discrimination, as well as possibly being un-PC, is a great deal of hard work. Anyway, isn't that what we have leaders for? To tell us independent self-determinists exactly how we should think?

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