What Happens When You Are Smarter Than the Intellectual

This is one of those thought-provoking essays that I tend to write three or four times a year.  So, the question is....what happens when you are sitting there and come to realize that the professor or intellectual in front of you (who used to always have knowledge, wisdom, debate skills, and reasoning ability)....he or she, just isn't much smarter than you.

Thirty years ago, I would have suggested that this would be something of a rare nature to notice....today, I might notice it five times a day.  As you span out and view people with university degrees, those awarded professorships, and the intellectual crowd....it's often questionable if they can match up to you, the mere mortal....with your personal wit and normal debate skills.

What really happened over the past thirty years?  I will offer three observations:

1.  Colleges downgraded the stamina requirements for a degree.  Oh, it might still be the same hard situation to be an engineer or doctor, but in most other degree programs.....debate and reasoning have been more or less downgraded....often to the level of a seventh-grade high school class.

2.  'Expert' status used to be a big deal....but between the news media and fake journalism....we'd handed out 'expert' status to literally tens of thousands of Americans, and the bulk really don't deserve the status.  There are individuals who had one single remarkable period in the early 1970s for maybe three years of 'expert' status, and we wake up to find this guy being recycled and thrust back into the limelight fifty years later, and noted for 'expert' status.  Then three minutes into this Q and A session....we just laughing at the poor judgement of the network, and 75-year old guy dragged in for purely entertainment reasons.

3.  Some type of brainwash affect has occurred, where people think four years in some college has given them some gift, and they immediately feel the power of intellectualism makes them 'smarter' than normal people.  Never once do they question this behavior.

Are we in for a rough ride?  I think so.  If you try to use facts with these people.....they get all confused and then resort to illogical arguments, with no real basis for a conclusion.