Abandon the Erudite Society Fantasy

We’re Actually Over-Applying Our Quest for Intellectualism

It’s hard to balance equality and the acceptance of diversity if you try to apply them on the same level. Every human has worth and beauty and dignity, but not every human is a great singer. There’s a difference between subjugation/oppression and recognizing that individuals have different strengths and weaknesses.

If you’ve spent much time around toddlers and their parents, you know that every toddler is reputed to be a genius much smarter than all other children their age (although no individual child seems to fall into this frequently referenced majority), and they’re all going to grow up to be stunningly physically beautiful.

While this phenomenon is startling enough when only applied to toddlers, it has become increasingly alarming since we’ve begun to apply it to people at steadily increasing ages. Some folks, it seems, will not rest until we’ve declared every human being “smart” and (physically) “beautiful.” But why?

We don’t need a society of unproductive erudites; we need a society of specialists who have been given the chance to develop a broad range of natural talents and abilities.

Why is it so important that we not acknowledge that people possess different levels of traditionally defined intelligence and physical beauty? Why aren’t these innate traits comfortably permitted to apply more to some people than to others?

As I mentioned above, we can accept that some people naturally have a better singing voice. We can agree that some people have more of a natural flair for sculpting or painting. We don’t automatically claim that everyone is a good actor “in their own way”, and we recognize that people have different athletic abilities. We immediately bristle, though, at the notion that some people are not naturally all that academically inclined or physically attractive.

These concepts are, by their very nature, comparative. “Smart” and “beautiful” aren’t, by…