Poser For Life!

I think this is just some kind of a note to my future self. It’s fairly poorly written and it sounds as if it is in the voice of a depressed teenager. It’s mostly just something on paper for blog’s sake because I haven’t written anything in awhile.

I’m an intellectual, or at least on my way to becoming one. Having grown up in punk rock and skateboard culture I know that a more appropriate name for what I am is a poser. Everybody starts off a poser.

I hate calling myself an intellectual because that term screams pretentious. It is pretentious because it sets me apart from others, as if I’m authentic and they’re not. But what about a poser intellectual? I suppose I’m something of a try hard that probably doesn’t deserve any respect from either the unauthentic or the authentic crowds. Unlike many posers before me I’m actually quite happy where I am. I don’t want to become an intellectual in order to exclude people. I want to become one in order to learn things, to better understand my life, and to maybe one day make the world a better place. I doubt leading an exclusionary lifestyle is going to fulfill any of these motives. I sometimes wonder why people of the intellectual breed act in such manner since they are of higher learning and must realize the virtues of knowledge, understanding, and kindness. Maybe true intellectuals are just the ignorant excluding the ignorant.

I suppose some ironies always stay the same. When I was punk, there were punks that called other punks posers. Ironically they were the excluded excluding the excluded. I was a poser then too I guess because I hated excluding.

Everybody starts off a poser but I hope that never changes for me. I’d rather be the excluded for life than ever be an excluder. I’m sure I’ve excluded someone somewhere in my past and that’s not cool. We’ve got to learn from past mistakes.