A Manual Of Intellectuals

A ruminating intellectual

I have always been fascinated by intellectuals. Just like I’ve always been fascinated by vultures, hyenas, skunks and snakes. Protected by the obscurity of my own complete ordinariness, I have been able to study these creatures in their natural habitats over several years – till I have acquired an expertise in them that few fellow men can boast of. So here is a concise guidebook on the different types of intellectuals in existence, along with their distinguishing characteristics.

The Left Liberals/Secular Humanists

Strictly speaking, The Left Liberals and The Secular Humanists are 2 different categories, but – just like asses and mules – they have sufficient similarities to allow themselves to be herded into one group for the sake of descriptive convenience.

In many ways, these are the most fascinating of intellectuals. In the previous century, they roamed the earth with unshampooed, uncut hair, unshaven cheeks (both the male and the female), unwashed rumpled clothes and a frayed cloth satchel slung over their narrow shoulders. Those days they talked earnestly about such delightful things as armed revolt against democratically elected governments, converting national highways into crimson rivers with the blood of massacred bourgeois capitalists, and reminisced fondly of the charming tortures and mass murders by the great humanitarian hero Stalin.

By the turn of the century, however, this species had undergone a remarkable physical transformation. They now have bizarre $500 haircuts, reek of delightful Eau de Cologne, wear clothes tailored by the greatest Italian & French designers, and the frayed cloth satchels have been replaced by smart, elegant Apple Mac Book Pro laptop bags. But I’m happy to report the basic ideology of the species remains the same, which is that: Anyone Who Has More Money Than Us Is Evil. These creatures hate to do work for the sake of earning money. Instead they work only for poor people, through NGOs. These NGOs are of course funded by money obtained from the same venal, corrupt, blood-sucking, filthy-rich, capitalist businessmen that they despise. But they take good care to express the deepest contempt for these capitalists in trenchant, maudlin articles in newspapers and magazines.

Please note, that the aim of these altruists is not to eradicate poverty. In fact, they stringently oppose any govt policy that is aimed at making the poor self-sufficient. Instead, they lobby incessantly for subsidies to the poor – so that the poor man can be barely fed and clothed, and retain his innocence, without ever being exposed to the evils of excessive money. So committed are these philanthropists that they work excessively hard by periodically flying business class to various exotic locations in the world – braving such immense perils as delayed flights, overweight airhostesses and jet lag – to ruminate on the various strategies to maintain the poor in their virtuous poverty, only allowing themselves the Spartan comforts of French wines, 7 star hotel stays and Cuban cigars.

Another distinguishing characteristic of the members of this species is that they don’t believe in God, but are very vociferous in supporting the human rights of terrorists who kill people in the name of God. That’s because, the terrorists mostly kill common middle class citizens who spend their lives uselessly in the selfish pursuit of money to feed, clothe and educate their families, and hence deserve to die anyway.

The Right Wingers

Contrary to what the name suggests, these people are not football players. They actually despise football. But they love cricket, because according to them, cricket is a more Indian game. (Intellectually less gifted creatures like you and me might fail to see how cricket is more Indian when both the games have been invented by Englishmen – but hey, such mental calisthenics are only meant for intellectuals)

The Right Wingers believe in such lofty ideals as culture, tradition and values. Their motto is: Anything which is old is good, while anything which is modern or progressive is bad. Thus they believe that marriage between strangers is good while marriage between people who have come to understand and love each other is bad; that peeing on the roadside is good while kissing in public is bad; that empirical, traditional medicine is good while scientific, evidence-based medicine is bad; that women in saris are devis while women in skirts are devils. They also KNOW that ancient Indians invented anything that was worthwhile: from computers, to fighter planes, to robots, to vibrating dildos.

Their offices and homes are adorned by prominently displayed color reproductions of portraits of Swami Vivekananda and Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya. With tilaks decorating their foreheads, they talk passionately about promoting Sanskrit and denounce English which they declare is the chief cause of the moral degeneration of society. However, if you’re able to adroitly manipulate them into leaving the room for a while (ask them to show you the complete collection of Baba Ramdev’s AIDS curing yoga CDs for instance), and rifle through their desk drawers, you’ll often find a copy of Rapidex English Speaking Course, along with a collection of novels by the greatest English writer of the modern era, Sri Chetan Bhagat (Sri Chetan Bhagat is also the most illustrious intellectual of all times. He has severe contempt for people who speak good English, and believes that the best humans should have English only good enough to understand his novels – another mental calisthenic which ordinary people like you and me, gentle reader, should not dare to attempt).

Another fascinating characteristic of these intellectuals is that they have ferocious contempt for western people, their culture and their values – while being simultaneously extremely proud of the fact that their sons/ daughters are now well-settled in the US. Presumably, their noble children undergo this horrendous sacrifice not to earn dollars, but for the opportunity of being able to convert those dissolute, morally bankrupt Caucasians into our own shining culture and values

The Rai Bahadurs

This is the most exquisite and exclusive breed of intellectuals found in India. A person can belong to this exalted group if and only if he is in possession of the 3Fs:

• Foreign bank account (preferably Swiss)
• Foreign Educational Degree
• Foreign English accent

Other than the excessive exclusivity of these criteria, these creatures are pretty open-minded. They do not have any particular ideals, principles or morals. Their great philosophy is that the truth is that which is currently fashionable. When the prevailing ideology was socialist, they used to be ardent socialists. Now that the prevailing ideology is capitalists, they enthusiastically advocate free markets and entrepreneurship.

(NB: Males of this species have the largest female fan following, because as every expert agrees – an elegantly attired man alighting from an Audi A7 is the most intellectual of humans)

The Feminists

These are women who after intense self-scrutiny, finally are forced to the inescapable conclusion that they have absolutely no talent or ability whatsoever to be called intellectuals. Far from being dismayed by this discovery, they boldly take a piece of paper, write on it in capital letters: FEMINIST, and paste it on their foreheads. And lo and behold: this act of elegant simplicity transmutes them instantly into the greatest of intellectuals, making them instant experts in every subject ever invented by mankind (oops! Humankind). Any man who disagrees with them even on such an obscure subject as the behavior of subatomic particles in a hailstorm becomes a misogynist, chauvinistic pig, capable of the most despicable and heinous sexual depravities.

Their feeling of sisterhood with the suffering women of the world is so strong that they campaign vociferously to obtain special privileges for themselves, despite never having suffered any discrimination by a misogynistic society themselves. Because, quite reasonably, their empathy with the actual victims of misogyny is such that their pain is the same as those suffering women, and hence entitles them to all the privileges like job reservations, cutting to the front of ticket queues, seats on metros, reservations to parliament, and outrage on social media platforms.

There are male feminists too, but their function is to merely acquiesce to everything that the female of the species say and to growl at and bite any man who dares to oppose the females. They are mastiffs in shining armor.

Female and male feminist intellectuals

The Judges

This species has a very simple and devastatingly effective modus operandi: Everyone apart from themselves – police, lawyers, doctors, politicians, businessmen, teachers and the entire system – is degenerate, immoral and corrupt. By adopting this simple strategy, they are themselves magically transformed (just like in the case of the feminists) into supremely erudite paragons of virtue. For instance, a certain uneducated actor has, by using this same technique, become so wise and erudite that he now knows more about the treatment of human diseases than professors and doctors who have spent decades researching and writing text-books on these diseases. Similarly, a certain social activist and politician, has by the simple process of declaring everyone else corrupt, transmogrified into the modern Mahatma Gandhi and is currently working on how to save the people of the country by destroying the country’s institutions

NB: Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely imaginary and mischievous

About doctoratlarge

I have always been a great believer. I've flitted from one belief to another, from religion to atheism and from one philosophy to another, until I finally settled on J. Krishnamurti whose philosophy is that there is no philosophy. So now I firmly believe that there is nothing to believe. Now such a belief would, I believe, have been considered dangerous to society if the authorities had believed me to be of any consequence. No man of consequence they believe would waste his time on the pursuit of blogging!

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Tagged with: feminists, intellectuals, left-liberals
Posted in Satire