Revelation Friday

I am a snob. An intellectual snob at that. No, I don't expect people to enroll in expensive schools, classes, institutions etc. to earn and accumulate intellectual/cultural capital. But I do expect them to make use of their brains, to think, to push themselves into realms which are beyond their comfort zones. And I think, all of these come from an intense engagement with life, which includes written texts, but is not limited to it. But I am especially annoyed with people who have relative material privilege and basic intellectual/cultural tools to do the work of thinking, but doesn't. I must say, the "creative" circuits in both India and US, are full of these kind. Like this filmmaker I met couple of summers back. She has made lots of documentaries, which are fashionably political, but never really push the buttons too much. And while talking about one of her films, I ended up asking questions which kind of problematize the very basis of her theoretical presumptions on which the film was based.

She said, with a sweet smile, and an accent, which only the old Anglophile elites in India possess, "Well, I am not an academic."

I hear this statement a lot. In different ways. And my answer is, "Well, you don't have to be. But that doesn't mean you don't really have to be aesthetically, politically, ideologically rigorous if you're not an academic. Also, if my academically (!) gained knowledge disrupts your basic presumptions that easily, probably the medium you're working in, is too weak to accommodate complexities. Which, I know, is not the case. So, what it means that, YOU are not doing the work, not thinking enough."

I do meet these people on a regular basis. Sometimes they intrigue me initially. I keep in touch for a while. And if after some time, they fail to stimulate me intellectually, I slowly withdraw. This normally tends to happen exactly during the time when these folks have just begun to like me a little bit more than the ordinary.

This is something over which I have ambiguous feelings. I don't think it's nice or desired to judge people based on their intellectual prowess. Or more precisely, what I perceive to be their intellectual prowess. But at the same time, friendship is not a charity. So, if an individual doesn't really interest me in the long run, I don't see any reason why I should continue keeping in touch just from a sense of duty or a feeling of righteousness.

I know I am opening a can of worms here, and the issue is not as simple as I am making it sound and read here. Hopefully in my future posts, I will be able to point out to some of the contradictions and complexities regarding the reality I am revealing here.