Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Dichotomy

A reader e-mail over at Andrew Sullivan's hits the screw right on the head:

Let's face it - intelligence is the new morality. For the left there are no long-term historical precidents to cite or follow. They are all rooted in a misogynic and racist western culture. There is no transcendent truth because that demeans the individual and takes away individual liberty. By what standard then do you judge an individual and determine their worthiness? Not by character ... not by integrity ... but by how bright they are. This intelligence of course is demonstrated by embracing the tenets of the left. Personal morality, sound legal judgement and basics such as keeping one's word do not have be followed as long as one is bright enough to to see the world from a left perspective. All other failings are excusable.

Werd, brah. When I was in college, I saw a false dichotomy between intelligence and morality. Most of the bright people I new in college were immoral, or worse, moral relativists. Their intelligence provided them with any number of intellectual hedonistic excuses for whatever whim they wanted to worship at the moment. I liked them well enough, but I couldn't really trust them, for whenever the wind within their wants blew a different direction, I knew they would betray me and think it was the right thing to do. Well, all right, except for maybe Doctor Who, who could have been my alternate universe twin, but who knows what changes those quantum fluctuations wrought?

My closest friends from the time period were fellows I met at work, which was way the heck off campus. These guys don't have college degrees, but they're good guys. And although I don't talk to anyone from Marquette's Writing-Intensive English Department, I still talk to Tulsa and Moose every couple of days and see them when I am in town.

And man, was the romantic outlook bleak. I thought I could choose between a woman who could satisfy my intellect as well as my loins, and a woman moral enough to keep that satisfaction to one set of loins. Of course, you have a good theory and bam, you find the exception. Not that I am complaining.

So there you have it. It can be a bleak world for the isolated intelligent-but-moral twenty-something, or at least it was back in the 1990s. I cannot speak to whether it's improved, or whether any twenty-somethings are intelligent-but-moral in the 21st century, but if you're out there, you're not alone, and intelligence/morality is not a dichotomy from which you have to choose one.

Unless I am mistaking the word dichotomy for something else and it really means two colors. But certainly one of you would have said something before letting me go on this long about it.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:29 PM