They take the privalage afforded to them by a robust education then use it to reinforce there own class position over others rather than to help them. Class dynamics; we want everyone to be educated highly, they dont.

There are lots of types of intelligence and lots of types of douchebaggery, and very few of them are mutually exclusive. Mathmatical ability doesn’t apply to ethics. The Prince is a prime example of how social intelligence can be used for evil. Tactical understanding doesn’t make someone kind or caring.

I’m gonna be honest. I kind of probably was sort of somebody like that back in my liberal days.

I put in a lot of wiggle words because I don’t know exactly what you’re referring to, but it definitely is how I felt.

I’ve done a lot of college. I have science degrees, I have a computer science degree, and I have spent a lot of time in my free time, in my liberal days studying math and science and skepticism and woodworking and finance and repairs and all kinds of stuff.

Pre-Marxism, my favorite types of podcasts were literally just random podcasts talking about random science-y or factual things, and I absorbed it all, and honestly it probably prepped me to learn about Marxism too because I learned to be very focused and able to take in a lot of information very quickly. In essence, I practiced being able to learn a whole lot even when not under school pressure.

But…

I don’t think anybody would have called me a mean person or an asshole. In fact, even when I told people I felt that way, they were like, “Nah man, you’re fine.”

But I was talking to liberals, not Marxists. My perspective has changed a little bit ( Just joking, it’s changed an exceptional amount.), and in a lot of ways I actually do kind of consider myself a douchebag compared to what I know now.

No matter how much someone knows about a particular topic, it’s really easy to put blinders on about every other topic. I got pretty good at this over time trying to admit what I didn’t know, but I think that’s what helped open me up to Marxism versus all the people who aren’t willing to learn about it because of the scary communist terms.

I put on my alternative hat and I think, “Okay, from this person’s perspective, what do I think? What would they think? How would I feel if I was in that position?” A lot of people don’t do that. They learn science or facts or something very specific, but they aren’t very good at emotionally connecting to other people.

It’s why emotional intelligence is considered something completely separate from typical intelligence. And of course you can’t really measure either of those things very accurately. They’re just words that we use to describe them. But you can tell when somebody has low emotional intelligence.

I definitely held emotionally charged beliefs about China and Russia and pretty much anybody that the Western newspapers told me to hate. It wasn’t very easy to see things from other people’s perspectives. It took a lot of time to open up and that requires dedication. And if somebody’s really interested in math or science but not interested in people, they aren’t going to put in the time.

Liberal democracies really like it when people learn science and mechanics and engineering and finance because that is stuff that the professional managerial class does, and that helps the bourgeoisie make money. But learning about Marxism and communism and the idea that there is oppressive systems and not just individual faults of individual people, well that threatens the existence of the establishment. These indirect, or even direct, threats of the establishment get translated into a culture among liberal democracies that biases against these ideas, even among the intellectuals.

There are different intelligences, I think. Not being a douchebag requires some level of emotional intelligence. That can come with maturity but not everyone matures as they age.

I was something of a reactionary douchebag and I would not have matured ‘on my own’ because I got many of my views from family members. I wasn’t horrible and neither are they. I’m talking about things like thinking that everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That perspective doesn’t leave much patience for people who have less privilege. So a relatively innocuous view at home becomes douchebaggery in public, when people are telling you how hard things are and you reply that they need to work harder. Or they tell you about ill health and you tell them they shouldn’t have let themselves get ill in the first place.

I only noticed the problem because friends called me out. That might not work for everyone. I’m incredibly grateful for those friends!

Anyway, my broader point is that ‘intelligence’ is hard to define, so let’s talk about knowledge instead. Someone can know a lot about math, science, literature, caring, etc, etc. All knowledge is socially constructed in one way or another. (The type of social construction is up for debate—there are different theories.) The education system focuses on subject specific knowledge. This leaves people feeling or seeming very ‘intelligent’ about their subject.

But learning one thing doesn’t mean you automatically learn everything else, except for some crossover skills and knowledge.

Unfortunately, class society doesn’t create an abundance of opportunities for learning much about care/empathy/emotional intelligence. Apparently, people who read a lot of fiction have greater emotional intelligence but I don’t know how you’d measure that.

It seems to me there are a few ways to avoid being a douchebag. Being social with good people (and avoiding toxic masculinity), because society will kick you in the teeth when you say the wrong thing to the wrong person, metaphorically and/or literally. Studying a curriculum of care, which could be standalone or woven into another subject’s curriculum. It’s standard practice for marxist and anarchist knowledge, I’d say. Otherwise, it’s an afterthought.

Two conclusions. One, the fact that someone is a douchebag suggests they haven’t yet had the fortune to learn otherwise. Two, the fact that someone is not a douchebag means they have had that good fortune. Which maybe suggests that you could see the douchebag as less privileged in some respects than the non-douchebag. But maybe this is me continuing to be a douchebag by other means, turning the logic off ‘intelligent douchebag’ on its head.

Or these are the ramblings of a very tired redtea.