Hi, Baldur,

I agree with all of what you said here. I was always a social outcast in middle school and high school, and to some extent afterwards during my early college years, so I was never in a position to wholeheartedly adopt all of the shared values that my peers had. I questioned everything they held dear, because part of what they held dear always seemed so hostile to me as an individual. This is part of the reason I began standing up for youth liberation back then, when so many of my peers didn't care, or were hung up on intra-group politics. This, of course, was long before I realized I would be a hebephile. When you don't "fit in," you begin to envision alternate ways for society to be constructed. Perhaps in order for society to progress from one step to a needed revision, it's absolutely necessary that you have misfits or persecuted individuals who are forced to see things another way. Then again, many of these persecuted individuals have tried to resolve their problems by assimilating themselves into the way things are, rather than the more difficult prospect of enacting change.

As for intelligence being a factor...sometimes yes, sometimes no. There are many very brilliant people who are inveterate defenders of the status quo, who appear to interpret every social phenomena in a way that bolsters the case for the current status quo to last forever. So I'm not sure that intelligence, in and of itself, is a determining factor in whether or not someone will stand up for change, or what type of change they will support (e.g., how sweeping a change they are willing to envision).

The thing is, I think there is a difference between intelligence, i.e., the amount of raw knowledge you can learn, and enlightenment, i.e., the ability to understand the information that you acquire. There were many brilliant white people during the pre-Civil War years that defended slavery as a necessary and permanent component of society, for instance.

I think whether or not someone is a beneficiary of the current system, or at least a perceived beneficiary, has a lot to do with how they interpret things they learn. This is why many intelligent people are not also enlightened individuals. People who have no stake in things remaining the way they are often tend to be those who question the status quo...but not all of them develop a correct understanding of where their best interests lie, because it can be difficult to see beyond the status quo that you were brought up your entire life to accept as the "natural way of things." This is why several people want change and see the need for it, but "cannot see it ever happening."

Hence, I think intelligence is not always a factor in determining whether people end up opposing the status quo or not.