At times, one may wonder which is more firmly rooted in the human mind: the noble and courageous desire to seek truth, or the cowering and destructive impulse to suffocate it. And one would be right to ask such a question, for a simple and candid observation of society tells us that the latter prevails in a grotesque expression of the lesser parts of our nature, in a sort of blind self-harm whereby we stifle our inner conscience and deprive ourselves of long-lasting psychological contentment and harmony with each other for the sake of satisfying momentary interests that are as shallow as they are fleeting.
When one turns on the TV, it is common to be met with a group of people, who have been granted some sort of intellectual authority merely by their appearance on television, engaged in a debate in which the truth is subservient to nearly every other interest at hand. Pleasing the audience, of course is an immediate form of social validation that inherently corrupts the propagation of truth, for the audience’s judgement is, merely by fault of human nature, susceptible to meaningless jests and caricatures, to straw-mans and facile unoriginality, to fallacious digs and humorous but empty witticisms, all of which either hinder or evade the truth, or else counter it entirely. It is absolutely indisputable that the emotional provocation that passes as intellectual thought today is, at its core, a way to deflect the true nature of reality to satisfy ulterior aims, whether these be political, personal, ideological, or social interests. The immediate want to provoke a satisfying response from onlookers, which passes, at the very latest, at the end of the program, is prioritized over the all-important need to promulgate the truth to viewers, and yet the influential figures in our society are shocked by the distrust, slander, and contempt they are inevitably met with.
But this self-destructive revulsion to the truth, or at least the full and unadulterated truth, isn’t only a hallmark of the news and entertainment industry. For in providing a platform for untruthful discourse, we bring upon ourselves the burden of a habitually truth-fearing society. Those who dare to speak the truth as they see it are laughed at, sneered, scorned, and shunned, or, perhaps worse, dismissed without a moment’s consideration. By shamelessly rewarding those who scoff at truth and the intellectual journey it requires, we have cultivated a society that is largely frenzied, unprincipled, and perpetually insincere. We have crippled the ability to have a collective and mutually beneficial search for truth amidst fallacy and crude simplicity, and have haphazardly replaced it with frivolous and ungrounded emotional interests that succeed in satisfying neither the individual nor their community.
We value cynicism over inspiration, slogans over treatises, petty quips over sophisticated satire, conformity over individuality, mere mockery over meaningful critique, cleverness over wisdom, youthful verve over seasoned composure. We feign an admiration for truth, but in a sort of pathetic fear we probe only just beneath the surface for it, cautious lest our worldview be shown to be fundamentally flawed. We make a bland caricature of intellectualism, philosophy, and morality, and laugh tirelessly at those who realize their death will mark an empty voyage if they do not strive to find meaning in their brief moments here on Earth. We dodge the significance of death itself, half-believing that our sensory and intellectual hedonism will carry us through to the bitter end without a sense of self-pitying regret to occupy our final thoughts. We carelessly follow the path society lays out for us, striving not for truth and utility but for vain and compromised acceptance, which will be rendered meaningless within a few years of our passing, even if it is temporarily gained. We dispassionately and oftentimes knowingly mistake simplistic assessments of intelligence as valid measurements of intellectual potential, and haughtily discard the unshakable principles that must accompany intellect for it to be of value. We prize the capability to defeat others in rapid debate or solve puzzling problems within a matter of minutes, but we neglect to properly emphasize the need to dig deeper, beyond intellectual ego and rhetorical skill, and fish out objective truth from a sea of meretricious fallacies. We jeer at genuine introspection, or else go about it so selectively and incomprehensively that we discover little about ourselves but what we already knew and accepted. We attend graduation speeches where we listen to self-satisfied pseudo-intellectuals deride the most valuable aspects of life under the guise of clever and irreverent incisiveness, or else speak with such juvenile arrogance and lack of perspective on such matters as to mock them even further, while the audience chuckles and applauds with mechanical sensibility as the core of their being is spat on and trivialized. We embark on profound interactions with others so infrequently that their instances are posed as noteworthy and life-altering events, while we cringe from the centuries of philosophical writing that came before us from a gut-wrenching fear of diving deeper than is tacitly approved. We listen and then grovel to the few who are both agreeable enough to be socially accepted but brave enough to voice their opinions on matters of importance, and then we walk away believing we have witnessed true wisdom and insight. We become so unable to disattach ideas from those who expressed them that we rely on society’s clumsy judgement to tell us who to listen to and venerate, and subconsciously or deliberately reason that we lack the intellect to examine ideas ourselves, as insentient entities that bear none of the rights or immunities of their promulgators. We define social skill based on the ability to voluntarily halt critical thought, and believe petty small-talk and sophomoric provocation, disguised oftentimes as coquettish or collegial humor, to be requisites for social success, while precluding all opportunity to engage others in a more meaningful manner by creating an atmosphere of insincerity and uninspired cynicism. We pride ourselves on being able to identify false intellectualism, but we likewise mock the means by which one would gain the ability to distinguish pretension from intellect, creating a cyclic impediment to intellectual growth. We refuse to recognize the intrinsic value of knowledge and intellect in and of itself, and deceive ourselves into believing that all things academic are mere extensions of the superficial intelligence we are inculcated with in school. We craft such derisive and nonsensical terms as “nerd” for those who aspire to reach their intellectual potential, and then apply it broadly across the spectrum without a second thought as to what, or whom, we are heedlessly dismissing. We tune in to radio shows to listen to someone of equal vapidness but superior audacity to ourselves echo our flawed preconceptions, and then shoot down objections under the pretense of intellectual consistency. We are given access to the means for an enrichment in knowledge whose dividends are paralleled by few others, and then we pass them by with the same nonchalance one would possess in strolling beside Niagara Falls without so much as a sideways glance. We pompously shrug off intellectuality as a viable pursuit in life, smugly believing that our appreciation for societal utility trumps whatever benefits arise from advancing human knowledge. We thoughtlessly snub the humanities in our country’s universities, fooling ourselves, in a sort of horrific irony, into thinking that our society has advanced beyond the need for intellectual development in and of itself. We nod approvingly at each new unremarkable engineer, but snigger at the next Shakespeare or Emerson and advise them to switch majors. We watch celebrities and comedians mock the thinkers of the future, especially those who attend our nation’s elite schools, and laugh along with them as an insecure consolation for our own vast inhibitions. We commend those who apply themselves physically with discipline and focus, but are quick to sneer at those who do the same in the intellectual sphere, branding them as conceited and humorless. We pretend not to understand those who fearlessly embody the instinct for truth that is buried deep within us, alienating them with such terms as “genius,” while acting as if our confined and artificial social demeanor represents what it means to be a human being more adequately than the works of Aristotle or Salinger. We likewise toss the label “classic” on an array of influential works, not knowing and not caring what justifies such a title in the first place, but believing that mere agreement will, by association, enrich our mind and being. We brush off one’s worth and meaning if it cannot be succinctly summarized on a single sheet of paper, and then smile in smug satisfaction when others have seemingly nothing to show for themselves. We wish to win the battle to attain a glittering crown, but prematurely quit the arduous struggle for the empire.
We do all this and are appalled to find truth has been turned upon its head. We chide sincerity and are bewildered at the cold superficiality around us. We blindfold ourselves and yearn for clarity. We scoff at individuality and are outraged by the harms of conformity. We choose not to realize our potential and are befuddled by our shortcomings. We write off unaffected wisdom and are perplexed by our unending confusion. We ironically use our faults as fodder for self-deprecation, and are frustrated by our stagnation. We compete viciously and then question why fraternity is so often tenuous and short-lived. We shrug as we construct the instruments for our own undoing.