On intellectual commodification

I suppose the title might have alienated some people already, or maybe they just don't know what I'm on about. It's not a frequently-used term, and I've only seen it referred to in the context of the commodification of education and ideas (fuck capitalism with a shovel). Here, I use it to refer to the view of intelligence itself as a commodity when separated from a person.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think that smart people get a bit of a shitty deal. Unless you take great pains to downplay your intelligence to fit in and act as society expects you to act, you're bullied, ostracised, and feared, because smart people are different and have the potential to do great things if they're allowed to, which they're not, because smart people and systems not designed to allow people to reach their full potential don't mix. You're isolated, too; nobody will touch you with a ten-foot bargepole because you're so different, yet you can see just how shallow, petty and hypocritical people are. Bit of a quandary, isn't it? And that abuse - because bullying is abuse - and that social rejection, that isolation, that pain, that lack of a support network, do not make for a particularly good combination, especially with rampant anti-intellectualism and intelligence being ranked below other characteristics such as (particularly for women) appearance. Oh, and if you're smart, you're painfully aware of all this (possibly literally) and you turn over it again and again in your head. Now do you see why ignorance is bliss?

But those are mostly the worst things smart people have to go through, and not all of them do. Most are perfectly normal people who fit into the perfectly normal mould society expects us to conform to, and who'll never rock the boat. They'll be showered with praise and gain accolades for themselves and those around them, but they'll never look beyond that. They'll never see how shitty the world is, or if they do, they'll keep it to themselves. They'll buy into the shallow and the superficial and the shiny. They won't think, they won't question, they'll just do as they're told and like it. And people will love them for it.

There's no point pretending I'm not bitter, is there? I renounced all that for the sake of keeping that unimportant, petty little thing, that absolute fucking hindrance, integrity - and why? Because I'm a bit of a coward and an idiot and as much as being a social reject hurts, losing my integrity would hurt more.

Anyway, I'll stop whining and finally segue into my main point...No matter what kind of intelligent person you are, people use you. They commodify you. They don't see you as a person who happens to be smart, they see you as a walking encyclopedia/calculator/translator/dictionary/whatever. This is what I mean by intellectual commodification, where the intelligence is split off from the person (which is stupid, because you can't split a personality trait from a person without changing that person) and people only care about the intelligence, because for the most part they're selfish, lazy, anti-intellectual, using twats. (I am a confirmed misanthrope, and it helps me to deal with the world without getting too broken. It's not meant personally - I direct my anger at the world in general.)

I don't know about you, but I fucking hate it. I fucking hate being used as a fucking information point because people can't be bothered to look things up for themselves, and I fucking hate being chucked aside and ignored when people are done with me, because hey, I'm not a person just like them, am I, with thoughts and feelings? I'm just an encyclopedia, or a dictionary, or a calculator. And they don't have emotions, right? (In fairness, I'm incredibly good at lying about my emotions if I have the motivation to do so, and I've run the gamut from repressing my feelings to denying them to not being able to feel them at all.)

The sad thing is, I used to crave being used like this, I really did. I would go out of my way to help people with things (I still do, but for different reasons) because for just a few minutes, it gave me the social contact I wanted. For just a few minutes, I could pretend that somebody needed and wanted me around. The years went by, though, and in addition to learning the hard way that people actually needed and wanted me around, I gained the confidence to reject people and to demand proper, respectful relationships with other people instead of simply being used. And now I'm just sick of being commodified. I shudder with disgust when people rave about how interesting the information I feed them is - if it interests you that much, go and do your own research, like I did! Don't be so lazy! And don't use me or anyone else, because we're not just walking search engines, we're real people!

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