The Disappointed Idealist

Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell My rating: 4 of 5 stars Thomas Sowell goes against the general trend of ideas promoted by today's society in this book and I appreciate that quite a lot. There is, indeed, a general fear (that he actually consistently criticizes) of attacking certain ideas that means that most of the intellectuals of today (as he very well points out) are actually, with different words, promoting the same trends and ideas. It takes guts to go against the trend and I like it. Generally speaking, the themes of this book revolve around the fact that intellectuals are people who speak without practical experience which means that in most cases, no matter how smart they are, they do not really know what they are talking about. But because they sound like they know what they are saying, they are influential in creating policies that in the end hurt the very people they are claiming to defend. I tend to agree with this idea. I also agree that in many cases the...

I am again using Cracked as an inspiration for a blog post, but hell. Whatever works. It all starts from  this article . It really makes a good point, as far as I am concerned, but I would raise yet another point. What movies do, is that in most cases they split the movie characters in The Good One and The Evil One. There are certain nuances, like The Good and Weak One who is afraid to fight unless properly motivated, the Evil Stupid One and the Evil Smart One. But basically you know around the half-time who you should root for and who will, eventually win the fight (because movies where the Evil One wins are rather rare - and even there the movie will leave a ray of light available, like in the True Detective Season 2 finale). The reality, however, is never that simple. You will not be able to tell who the Evil One is, the Evil One is rarely an actual person and it will rarely be as simple as just getting rid of the Evil One. OK, there are exceptions. There's Hitler, for...