IBc!

What use is philosophy if it is not practicable and cannot be used by a person to lead a happy life? What use are intellectual discussions if they cannot be applied to make a difference, in the life of a man walking on the road? Just a vulgar time pass for the elitist, sitting on couches in swank coffee shops or cozy drawing rooms or blogging his/her way out and busy shooting others down in chat rooms, who can make intelligent remarks about everything and everybody, but cannot bear the uncouthness of the situations when faced by them on the road. This, if I may get the credit of coining the phrase, I have named “Intellectual Bakchodi” or “IBc”( Yes, the c is small as h in PhD!). All fart and no shit.

People read Ayn Rand and try to imitate her characters, none of whom resemble real life, and fail to even become second rate or third rate Roarks, Reardens or Anconias. Haven’t met a Dagny Taggart yet, but I am sure there would be a good number of them. Illusions of so called individualistic entities, created through the lens of a desire to look and sound different from the ‘crowd’, make them dogmatic and stale, bitter and critical of everything. And they stink! Labeling everything in two categories: Peter Keating and Howard Roark, you cannot overlook the ‘in betweens’. You are a part of the crowd, inhaling the same air which it exhales, walking the same earth and eating the same grain. What would set you apart is what you do with your life living within same constraints, same air, water and earth, not the permanently frosty expression of a nose exposed to infernal stench.

Seeing the world through half baked understanding of philosophies and inside a blind veneration of their exponents is a source of immeasurable amount of miseries. Personal philosophy has to evolve, and to be chosen consciously, having been questioned, tested and experimented with in life’s situations. It is built over time, thread by thread, shard by shard. Of course, dramatic incidents in life have power to alter the view for a lifetime, yet, it is not something to be imitated after reading a few books, listening to a few people or hammered in or dictated by your parents, because then, you are just copies coming out of an assembly line from the same mould, maybe expert in IBc, but lifelessly shallow.