i would not say i am an artistic person, or at least not to the caliber of many other 'artistic' people, but i do believe i sympathize towards the intangible world more than most people around me. perhaps this is another reconciling of two worlds that i find myself burdened to uphold, but i think (or at least i believe) in equally subjective and objective ways. there is, however, one aspect of the intangible world that i despise, and that is emotion.
when i say emotion, i don't mean just having emotions like happiness or sadness, and if anyone actively tries to misconstrue my definition and make it out as if i hate emotions period i will have to put in nontrivial effort to not slug them in the face. when i say emotion i mean the object in the statement "this person is emotional". i mean the thing that makes someone think they won an argument by being louder, or crying harder, or committing an ad hominem. it all leads back perhaps to my greater disdain for anti-intellectualism, something that i see too often in this world.
"anti-intellectualism? are you seriously compartmentalizing people like that?" i asked myself when i came to that conclusion. i was worried some kind of superiority complex formed, like a bigoted us-and-them scenario. but the more i think about it, the more i actually convince myself that i do, in fact, think like that. anti-intellectualism, at least to me, is not a matter of iq or knowledge base, but it refers to a tendency for one to actively and willingly absorb knowledge and consider a wider range of it. anti-intellectuals, at least to me, represent people who willingly forgo learning in order to strengthen their own worldview. i don't believe people are born to be like that, but i believe it is one of those rare conscious decisions of immense consequence and as a result i can fully hold someone accountable for their decision. think about it like working out: if someone works out more than me, they can undoubtedly say they are superior to me in physical capabilities. in the same way, if someone consciously chooses to give up knowledge or not know something simply to strengthen their preconcieved ideals, i treat them as if they are inferior to me in knowledge and thus also opinion.
to clarify once again, i do not believe someone who is "dumber" than me is inferior, because if that was the case i would probably be one of the most inferior people on the planet. someone from usc, cal state, community college, or even people without a high school diploma are not necessarily anti-intellectual. in fact, a surprising amount of people from top schools across the world can still be anti-intellectual, and believe me i've seen it. they are impossible to argue with, not because they have good points but simply because they believe their points are so good and if you prove them wrong it becomes a war of personal attacks. anti-intellectual people create a world where you need to decide what knowledge you want to know, even though i believe there shouldn't be such thing. knowledge should be pursued at all times, and there shouldn't be commonly available knowledge that is 'too dangerous' or 'too weird' to know (of course, personal knowledge will have those boundaries). once knowledge becomes treated like the kind of thing you hesitate to gain, emotions become the driver behind actions that otherwise need knowledge to carry out.
without knowledge, conversations become tedious to carry out or banal in nature. what is conversation if not the sharing of knowledge? there is nothing worth talking about if there is no knowledge, and anyone who has tried talking with a purely emotional backdrop can tell you how insufferable it is to do so.