Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate The Smart Kids By Grant Penrod

Human instincts are behaviors that are genetically wired into us that help us react to our environment, but most of the time they are more hurtful than useful. For example, one of them is to follow and be influenced by our surroundings. Since birth we adjust to what family setting we may have and conform to what we see on the outside. At some point this human instinct becomes hurtful to us as conforming makes us act and think like everyone else. So how is it that conformity affects individuality in our society? Our technology has gone so far and has improved better than it ever has, so information is faster to spread and conforming easier to do. Conformity is in all of us and we don’t seem to realize it until later on, so we must take action now to understand how conforming in our world can be harmful to who we are and the individuality we may have left. When conforming people tend to lose or acquire characteristics that weren 't there before. We can see this in the essay “Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate The Smart Kids” by Grant Penrod explains why anti-intellectualism exists in our society and why intellectuals are despised instead of praised for their hard work. He writes “Certainly the image presented by modern celebrities suggests that intellectualism has no ties to success and social legitimacy”(760). What Penrod is saying is that the media glorifies non-intellectuals which in result makes intellectuals lose their ambition to continue with their accomplishments.