Why do a lot of NTs seem to hate intellectuals?

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The Amish are free to leave their culture at adolescense(sp?). They get a period of two years to live the normal american life, sow their wild oats, etc. And then to decide if they want to live THIS way or the way of their parents. I was surprised at how many chose to go back..
The real threat in America is the other fanatics that are trying to "DUMB" down America so their myopic world view will not be questioned. Former Presiden Bush was a member of this group. So his own ignorance is not actually surprising. It is however, a dangerous belief system for the Leader of the Free World. Best example? Those who held similar beliefs in the Intelligence community in the late 80s & early 90s last century. They totally misread the signs that comunism was nearly spent as a political force. You have to be able to be flexible in your viewpoints when dealing with the rest of the world. Something we in the US are losing.
It is also because our news/media are owned by corporate interests who filter it to fit their wants & needs. A sad reality.

Sincerely,
Matthew

It's not just the Amish. Hutterites are guilty of this, too.

America loves the stupid. TV commercials and TV shows are directed towards the stupid. Most TV game shows are designed around the stupid. You only need 1/10th of a functional brain to appreciate Wheel Of Fortune or any other ridiculous TV program. There's still hope, though. All is not lost. Every so often a Nova will show up, or a Nature program. Those fascinate me to no end. The other crap? Not so much.

TV is stupid, mostly. I prefer TED talks (google it). Lots of interesting things I didn't know I was interested in! Short talks from intellectuals all over the world.

Let me clear up something: yes, the Amish youths are given a "choice" to stay or to leave. But if they leave, their family will not respect their decision. Could you imagine your parents pretending you didn't exist? One retired Amish woman complained that she was treated worse by her family and community than the guy who shot up an Amish schoolhouse in 2006.

"LadybugQ, you need to put quotes around my paragraph if you want to quote it."

Yahsuh! Rightaway suh! Did you intend to come across as a holier-than-thou nitwit, or is that part of your overall persona?

Being a Brit, I was going to make some slightly derisive comment about it being more to do with the US than NT. But I thought about what for most people here must be the everyday culture, and rethought that.

Serious, not rhetorical question - by definition, are AS people more likely to have intellectual interests?

There is an anti-intellectualism in a lot of culture, yes. But I think more people are indifferent to intellectualism than anti it.

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Rumspringa isn't much of a choice - given the guilt and ostracisation and cutting of ties that would surround a choice of leaving, it strikes me as a clever way of ensuring devotion to the life and of weeding out those who simply hate it all and might cause trouble later.

"Amish communities practise the institution of rumspringa. At 17 their children, until then subject to strict family discipline, are set free. They are allowed, solicited even, to go out and experience the ways of the modern world - they drive cars, listen to pop music, watch TV and get involved in drinking, drugs and wild sex. After a couple of years they are expected to decide: will they return to be full members of the Amish community or leave it forever and become ordinary American citizens?

But far from being permissive and allowing the youngsters a truly free choice, such a solution is biased in a most brutal way. It is a fake choice if ever there was one. When, after long years of discipline and fantasising about the illicit pleasures of the outside world, the adolescent Amish are thrown into it, of course they cannot help but indulge in extreme behaviour. They want to test it all - sex, drugs and drinking. And since they have no experience of regulating such a life they quickly run into trouble. There's a backlash that generates unbearable anxiety, so it is a safe bet that after a couple of years they will return to the seclusion of their community. No wonder that 90% of Amish children do exactly that.

This is a perfect example of the difficulties that always accompany the idea of a "free choice". While the Amish adolescents are formally given a free choice, the conditions they find themselves in while they are making that choice make the choice itself unfree. In order for them to have an effectively free choice they would have to be properly informed on all the options. But the only way to do this would be to extract them from their embeddedness in the Amish community."And so on...

The issues discussed on the following page sadden me... but make for interesting conversation: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 601AANOsl5

I always thought that saliva was slightly alkaline.

Hmm ... I'd better check ...

"Normal Saliva PH"



Neutral pH is 7.0 ... 1.0 to <7.0 is acidic ... >7.0 to 13.0 is alkaline.

So... saliva is acidic most of the time, but may become alkaline when hungry.

I stand corrected.

But I am not a spawn of Satan!

I believe this is central to the anti-intellectual stance, particularly among pseudo-intellectuals who want to give the illusion of brilliance to those around them. The pseudo-intellectual often thrives on being perceived as a genius. It's very much about social standing and manipulation of others. An actual intellectual simply wants to inform others, as he himself would want to be informed. Not for accolades, but for the dispersion of knowledge.

Of course, many onlookers tend to lack the ability to comprehend regardless, so many assume the pseudo-intellectual must be brilliant because of both his "big words" as well as the way in which he carries himself socially. The onlookers wouldn't actually have the ability to determine whether or not he is a genius based upon comprehension, as they can't comprehend. They go by feeling. "He seems really smart, so he must be (even though I really wouldn't know either way)" is their thought process. And the pseudo-intellectual, who thrives on how he is socially perceived, can't have an actual intellectual expose the truth, even if the intellectual doesn't care about social standing and just wants the truth to be known.

Some people were discussing this on a gifted forum. Someone said that people generally dislike displays of intelligence because they feel threatened by their assumption that they cannot be as intelligent. She said that most people can appreciate and admire people who are good athletes, artists, etc., because they can envision how to achieve that (lots of practice, etc.), and thus they don't feel threatened, but being smart or achieving academically is mysterious to many people, thus, they resent it.

I thought it was an interesting idea.

I think that's a very valid question. I believe that message boards in general tend to draw a crowd that have at least a BIT of an 'intellectual' disposition. Message boards are usually focused on a particular subject of interest, and often involve reading long posts; people who lack the patience or interest, tend to prefer social media as the meat of their online interaction.

I can't call myself an intellectual and keep a straight face; many of my interests are shallow. Yeah, I'll read a book sometimes, and I get a kick out of my current special interest, which is Indonesian culture+history+language, but my general knowledge lags far behind the average frequent WP poster.
On the other hand, MOST people I've met who may be considered intellectuals, and with whom I've had great conversations about many subjects, were not autistic.

Great points about pseudo-intellectuals! They care more about how smart they are PERCEIVED to be than how smart they actually ARE.

Well, I for one have indeed been perceived as very smart, and have repeatedly tested in the gifted range on tests. But those things matter little to me compared to how much I ACTUALLY FIND OUT ABOUT THE WORLD. The way I see it, whenever I realize I'm wrong and admit it, I gain knowledge. Isn't the ability to gain knowledge what intelligence is all about?

I also feel no need to be THE smartest. Only one out of 7 billion can hold that title. It would be a sad state to have only one person in the entire world "adequately" smart... No matter how many times I'm truly #1 in intelligence in a group, I still reckon that there are people smarter than me out there. Hell, I would LOVE to meet someone significantly smarter than me! And I'd be THRILLED to find out that someone existed whose intelligence was farther above mine than mine is above the "average" person!!

I've found that honesty and true intelligence show with time.

As someone who grew up in a county where a large portion of the population was made up of such people (many of whom share my surname, actually, it being Germanic in origin)
I don't think you know at all what you're talking about.

The religious "fanatics" (most people in America being religious, and Protestant, actually) know EXACTLY how to use electricity and cars, and they sometimes do in emergencies. The rest of the time, they CHOOSE not to. Each individual gets two years as a young adult to live an English (non-Amish) lifestyle, and decide for him/herself whether to return, and despite individual anecdotes mentioned in other posts, I don't know of any example where I'm from where an Amish family didn't welcome back a son or daughter who chose to live an English lifestyle at any time.

Their clothing is 19th century, if anything, I'd say. And while it might seem backward to an elitist like yourself, I can actually see the appeal of living a largely-agrarian lifestyle and subsisting off the land by the sweat of one's brow.

To be blunt, modern public education IS to a high degree "useless" in terms of practical application to the current job market and learning a trade, and that's true a hundred-fold for people who want nothing more than to farm the land, get married, and live simply. I certainly can't sum up in my head the acreage needed to yield X number of bushels for a crop, as can many Amish children by age four or five.

The community I know of is hard-working (a father-son Amish construction firm built my parents' house) and kind (one of them offered me a ride on his tractor when I got stuck on a long walk in the pouring rain) and maybe they deserve more than your snobby, ignorant derision.


I can agree, generally, that there's a disturbing trend toward anti-intellectualism in political discourse,
and that it's particularly-strong among the religious crowd,
but there are many stripes of religious in the US-
the Amish don't even involve themselves in politics!

Last edited by ValentineWiggin on 31 Aug 2012, 2:39 am, edited 4 times in total.

Because they are stupid. Duh. They just jelly.