To Those of Intellect

This post is inspired in large part by the largest and healthiest debate to come out of the blog so far, and with that I will attempt to cut it off at the knees as suck the soul from those who have participated.

I enjoy my share of intellectual discussion. I am as willing as the next person to engage in topics ranging from the legitimacy of the Core curriculum to the complications underlying the new world economy. I usually enjoy such discussion. But there is a point, an event horizon in many of these discussions in which my desire to participate ceases and instead my eyes narrow and my heart grows cold. I begin looking for sharpened objects or bludgeons instead of counter-points and questions. This point is when I discover that my intellectual discussion is not discussion at all. It is someone trying to casually get away with masturbation in front of my very eyes. Through subtle rhetoric, they are able to make me think that we are engaged in discourse, when in fact they are trying to have intercourse with my eyesocket. They are simply pleasing themselves with their knowlege and ability to bring to light my lack thereof. This is intellectual masturbation, and I have a mixed track record of wins and losses against people who engaged in this regularly, and they have a mixed record of surviving the occurences when I am defeated.

However, those who engage in intellectual masturbation sometimes make a DIRE mistake in their engagement of this sinful practice. They try to "bring the funny." Bringing the funny is making the innacurate assumption that just because you have proven to be intellectually superior to someone else by engaging in intellectual masturbation that it is an appropriate time to crack a joke at their expense. Those of true intellect know that there is a separation between knowledge and humor that must never be crossed. Look at every joke ever written that is intended for an academic audience. Math and science jokes are the worst. Cracking a joke about Kant will always get you punched in the grundle and never get you laughs, I know this because my CORE professor once said "Augustine Kant know Nietzsche about anything." She is dead now. And the authorities called it an "accidental lighting strike."