VERBOSITY, INTELLIGENCE, SUBSERVIENCE

In today’s world, there is a clear dichotomy – socially speaking – between being intelligent and appearing intelligent. Intelligence is appreciated, yes, but an overt display of it is always frowned upon. The standard premise is that intelligence and intellectuality being with them a sort of inbuilt arrogance, along with the need to be publicly accepted and appreciated for them. Which, in simple terms, could be vulgarised as, “The intelligent sort shows off and wants to show off, for he wants to be adored.” The falsity of this statement needn’t be stated, but its effects must. They are disastrous. For what intelligence and intellectuality – almost always inevitably – bring along is a fear, a dread of being sniggered at, of being ridiculed and made a laughing stock out of. As a consequence, treating the intellectual as a sham causes pain and withdrawal. It may be observed that insecurity is also a common trait to the pure thinker. These detractions and criticism only make him feel more insecure. Also, such effects, over a long time, fray the keen edge of intelligence. The intellect weathers into mediocrity, his actions, thought and speech become pedestrian, and his achievements notably more humdrum.

The intellectual is somewhat sneeringly described by his detractors as a user of long words, a thinker of abstract, complicated ideas; as a possessor of eccentric beliefs. This, although true, is hypocritical, for it bespeaks only the smallness of thought in the minds of the detractors. The so called public displays of intelligence are unconscious. One who is prolix is so because he has been blessed with a good memory and a better lexicon. A thinker is able to do so for his mind is endowed with a clarity of thought and a clarity of vision denied to others. A writer writes, and a musician makes music, for the same reasons, because they can. And let’s face it, appreciation and awe can come only if the thing being treated with awe is not understood by the masses; in this instance it is true that familiarity breeds contempt.

So what, if anything, must the cornered intellectual do? Withdraw? Stop appearing intelligent? Adopt silence as the only solution and go unmarked and unrecognised unto the horizon?

Yes and no.

History is full of examples of those who stood up to the challenge and criticism and stood tall in the end. Would Beethoven have written such lovely music had he meekly accepted criticism? Would a Hemingway or a Rushdie or a Dickens written so beautifully had they toned down their words for the masses? Would we have our culture if the intellectuals bowed down to denigration? I think not.

But then these are the greats. What solace is left to one whose greatness hasn’t been established? Or one whose fame is yet to be made? Whence would he find the courage to stand up for himself, and shake his fists in the hands of disparagement? Wherein would he find the pluck to indulge in his talents? More often than not, he doesn’t fight back. He merely subsides into anonymity and subservience. He mellows himself so he can be accepted, he serves instead of commanding; he gives up instead of conquering.

And thus, we lose our wise to social mores. Cowed by criticism, or offended by it, they pull themselves out, either to sit and mope or to curse their lives away. They achieve nothing, taste not a drop from the fountain of Greatness. Probably Frost was mistaken when he wrote:

Ah, when to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?

Maybe sometimes, it so happens that it is not treasonous to yield with a grace to reason, to go with the drift of things, to blend into the majority. Maybe, it is more soothing to be one of the many, pending sacrifices, than to stand alone and fight. For in the end, what can be achieved going against the grain? Enemies? Hatred?

It is at this junction that the question must be asked, is becoming one of the masses subservience? Is genius being sacrificed for adulation? And is it, at the end, worth it? Is it worth it that the world will never know about them, will never cheer them, but they will win friends, and positions and standing? The question is for each one of us to answer to our own consciences. And it must be faced.

So…

Maybe the road not taken must for the nonce be abandoned, and the beaten path followed. For, indeed, “the world, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.”

The “wise men know at their end that dark is right, for their words forked no lightning.” They go, oh so silently into that good night.

They disappear.