Death of Intellect

By Richard Wilk

A good conversation is hard to find. This is due to the decreasing respect for intellect in society today. Most people would rather discuss a football game or what they did at their ‘kegger’ last Friday than actually hold a conversation of substance. This kind of behavior is the byproduct of the loss of intellect. People believe athletes, soldiers, movie stars, and milkmen are heroes. It can be seen that men of muscle are more respected and generally have more privileges from society than those who chose to use their mind.

In schools today, athletes receive more respect and admiration than those who do well in their classes. A student can achieve a greater than 4.0 GPA and still be treated with less respect than the quarterback who threw twelve interceptions in the last football game. Athletes can generally get away with any type of behavior with little or no repercussions. This includes ‘justified stupidity,’ and incredible rudeness to everyone and anyone they choose. When someone less ‘famous’ attempts this kind of behavior they are ostracized by their classmates and frowned upon by teachers. To be physically harmful to someone is considered to be less taboo than making someone feel stupid. Talk about a double standard.

People who are intelligent and like to show it are typically called conceited and arrogant while the athlete who flaunts his strength is typically looked up to with awe. Within society, intelligence is more often punished. Historically people of the mind have been purged from society quicker than those who are ignorant. This behavior is demonstrated in most dictatorships throughout history.

Due to this diminishing intellect, society itself is endangered. Since people have no desire to think at all, social and political decisions are made not by a free thinking mind but rather what politicians want them to think. We see that politicians are nominated and voted into office based purely on the fact that they are willing to pander to the lazy, ignorant and unmotivated who will not think for themselves and critically evaluate their situations. Social laws are passed and implemented based on the goal of offering a large number of people an easy way to receive help, without contributing any help back.

A large part of this growing ignorance can be found in the very foundations of our schools today. As was mentioned earlier, athletes are more rewarded than those who are intellectuals; therefore there is more motivation to work physically than to work mentally. Why deal with the stress of thinking when you can just as easily be an athlete and not deal with thought at all? The solution: abolish sports in schools. With these removed, people will be forced to do more intellectual activities and perhaps raise the general intellectualism in schools.

Unless this growing deficit of intelligence is fixed, society will be finished as we know it. Science will cease to exist and sports will take over. Politics will be removed and the standard way of making decisions will be based on who has the most physical prowess. The world will fall to rubble since men of the mind will vanish and ogres of pure muscle will take their place. Anarchy will prevail, cities will burn, and the world will become something resembling that of the Mad Max movies. This is this is the only potential outcome when men decide that the mind is pointless.