Saturday, June 27, 2015

What is Intellectualism or Intellectual Way of Living

Technically speaking, intellectualism is an ideology wherein the subscriber predominantly relies on his/her intellect rather than physical capabilities for whatever he/she does. Its practical interpretation is a way of life dominated by use of intellect at every step the person takes. This makes a great difference in way a person thinks, speaks and performs. Let us see how it matters in day-to-day living of a person.

Supremacy of Logic

Humans have a highly developed faculty of thinking and logically deciding on problems faced by them. Therefore, logic is the first and foremost asset of human life, and making the best use of it is essential for being humane. It forms the core of intellectualism for the logic being the application of intellect.
When great scholars were developing humanity for use of intellect, enemies of humanity brought in a vicious concept of 'faith' to human life, wherein a person need not to think and logically decide on an issue but go by what somebody else guides him/her to do. Purpose of developing faith in people has been misguidance and exploitation of people by some cunning preachers of faith.
Since, humans have inertia, they look for easier ways of leading life. Faith comes handy to people saving them from complex process of thinking and logically deciding. Hence, faith became more popular than logic as way of life. This reduced number of intellectuals in humanity.   

Application of Intellect to Life

Wisdom of a person guides him/her to success in achieving his/her goals without consideration of what is right or wrong. But intellect of a person illuminates him/her with knowledge of right and wrong, and forces him/her to be on the right path irrespective of whether he/she loses or wins in games of life. Even in a loss, such a person has the contentment of being on the right path, while a wise person may find physical comforts of life but feels discontentment or even repentance for what he/she might have done to win a race. This differentiation in wisdom and intellect makes an intellectual person to have and comply by moral values as basic principle of life and then applies wisdom to achieve success.

Since majority of persons want success, intellectuals are always in a minority in a society, and make a distinction by being flag-bearers for being followed by some others looking for standard principles of life.   

Synergy in Thoughts, Speech and Actions

The first sign of a person being moral is that he/she does what he/she speaks, and he/she speaks what he/she thinks. This makes his/her mind clear free from confusion of ambiguities, saving him/her energy for serving greater purposes of human life.

Such a person is always straight forward which goes against modern practices of diplomacy wherein a person speaks sweetly even with bitterness in his/her mind and actions. This trait further reduces number of subscribers of intellectualism.

Individual Freedom with Social Discipline

Since our great ancestors decided to have human settlements at fixed places, we became social animals. This imposes social discipline on each of us limiting our freedom to individual level only. Another implication of this intellectual trait is to respect rights of others through pursuing own rights, and also fulfilling own responsibilities before expecting others being responsible members of society.
This provision of intellectualism was vehemently breached by enemies of humanity through preaching religions and putting it into social arena of individuals for guiding their social lives. Since religions have been many with mutually contradictory preaching, social displays of religious performances put followers of different religions at war with one another. The right course should have been to put religious faith into individual arena of persons.

Duty of Giving Back to Life

Human life is a precious gift of Nature to us, for which we need to pay back to Nature by producing and making our children better members of humanity. This way only, we can ensure continuity of a happy human life on the planet. Apart from this being our social responsibility, it is our our individual responsibility too as a parent.

Working for Livelihood

Everyone of us needs food, clothing to cover our bodies, shelter to live in, and many other comforts of human life. All these things need us to earn money through working. Even with huge inherited wealth, a person should not lie idle or loiter here and there just because he/she is sure of meeting all his/her needs from the inheritance. Further, we are obliged to raise a family to continue human life on the planet, this too needs us to work for economic support of the family. Anybody not having a proper work for himself is not fulfilling his/her basic humanly duty.

Creating for Advancing Humanity

Modern human life needs thousands of things as necessities, facilities, conveniences, such as motor vehicles, computers, telephones, furniture, dress materials, variety of foods, oils and cosmetics, drugs and medicines, etc for each of us. Such things are available to us because somebody else created these. It becomes our duty to give back to humanity as creators of something new. Nobody can afford to remain just a user or consumer of such things like a parasite. such creations are the basic things through which humanity has advanced as superset of natural life.

Optimum Use of Resources

Every living-being survives and progresses by consuming resources from the Nature external to him/herself. Hence higher availability of resources to every living-being may mean survival of more units of life and their better qualities of life. While others may not understand this, intellectuals understand this well, they use minimum of resources to let these be available to others and manage themselves optimally.

This strategy includes minimization of wastes produced and thrown back to the Nature by them, and may need recycling of wastes. For example, conversion of human excreta into useful manure for growing fruit, vegetable and fiber plants in a garden, and further making use of organic wastes from plants and kitchen into more manure for the plants may make a family unit or a set of persons self-reliant for meeting most of their medicines, foods and fiber requirements and producing almost nothing to pollute the Nature. Such practices may ensure good health to all through right selection of food plants for growing in the garden.
The water drawn for underground is given back to the ground through rain-water harvesting during rainy season wherein the rain water from the area is taken to the lowest point and dropped into the ground through a boring. Same boring is used to provide Earthing to the Electricity circuit of the home.       

Performance Efficiency

General definition of efficiency of a system is the ratio of output to input of the system which is always less than 1. Efficiency of human life is thus measured in abstract terms through study of what a person gives out to the World external to him/her and what it takes from it. Both the input and output may be positive as well as negative. say, giving out foods for somebody is positive but giving out pollutants to the World is negative output. Similarly, an input of a food item is positive while absorbing some pollutants and neutralizing it is a negative input. 
With intellectual living as depicted above, a person essentially intakes fresh potable water, may be some food items, clothing, building material, etc from outside, and outputs a huge quantity of food, firewood, timber and medicinal items produced in the garden, and most importantly gives out nothing that is negative. Further, he/she provides homes for a large number of birds, insects, etc in the garden.
Another important service an intellectual provides to humanity is developing and exemplifying a rich tradition for others to follow. His/her children grown through intellectual living prove to be more responsible citizens than others. This makes the whole family a precious asset for society.       

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