Does reading books make you an intellectual?

My friend told this to me today. He was implying the name of an author but me and my friends were totally stumped and didn't know who he was talking about. Then he says "Oh, I'll just have to talk with (name of another friend) since he's an intellectual and knows this author" and yadda yadda. He's also black.

Intellectual is a dirty, meaningless word. I usually use it as an insult.

>>1
Reading books is a common characteristic of intellectuals, but by no means are they directly related.  It doesn't matter how many times you've read Harry Potter or Tom Clancy, it doesn't make you an intellectual.

>>2 must be from the great US of A.

>>3 is signed.

not all books are equal.

like harlequin mills and boon is not intellectual..

Reading a book shuts people up and you get better and more information.

>>4
Wrong, I'm from the E of U. What passes off as 'intellectuals' is just stupid partisan sleezebags with no understanding of the world at all.

>>1

I loled tonight because how you stopped everything to tell us he's black.

>>1
you are faggot who is not well read!

As an intellectual, I take pride in the fact that I don't know all the bullshit authors pumping out bullshit every day.

Reading books means you know how to read a book.  Doesn't make you an intellectual any more than watching a little TV makes you a couch potato.

If he thinks he's better than you for reading a book, he's an immature person.

>>1
you and your other friends should get together and beat the shit out of him

That's untrue, I enjoy reading books and am also retarded.

Schopenhauer on Reading

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of the work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another’s thoughts. So it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking; just as the man who always rides, at last forgets how to walk. This is the case with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid. For to occupy every spare moment in reading, and to do nothing but read, is even more paralyzing to the mind than constant manual labor, which at least allows those engaged in it to follow their own thoughts. A spring never free from the pressure of some foreign body at last loses its elasticity; and so does the mind if other people’s thoughts are constantly forced upon it. Just as you can ruin the stomach and impair the whole body by taking too much nourishment, so you can overfill and choke the mind by feeding it too much. The more you read, the fewer are the traces left by what you have read: the mind becomes like a tablet crossed over and over with writing. There is no time for ruminating, and in no other way can you assimilate what you have read. If you read on and on without setting your own thoughts to work, what you have read can not strike root, and is generally lost. It is, in fact, just the same with mental as with bodily food: hardly the fifth part of what one takes is assimilated. The rest passes off in evaporation, respiration and the like.

>>15
y hallo thar critical reading skills

Anonymous on Schopenhauer: all philosophers are retarded. It therefore follows implicitly that Schopenhauer is a retard.

A guy I know carried Ulysseus around for the sole purpose of looking smart. It actually did the opposite because I started talking about the book in class once and when he had nothing to say in response he looked like the dumbass he was.

>>15
Has a point, y'know.

>>19
Yes it is.  Unfortunately for Schopenhauer, it's a bad point.

I think the more you read, ther more your vocabulary expands. So the 'intelligent' you sound. But that only works if you read a lot.

>>21
False. I read a lot of complicated words and books and I don't pick up any of the words from there. By what you're saying, using the internet makes you smarter. I visit a lot of forums and when I see someone use a word that I don't know the definition for, I look it up and add it to vocabularY. LOLZ

Anytime I dont know a word, i look it up.
part of expanding your everyday vocab.

>>23
It must be fun reading difficult books. What is this, 9th grade english class? Even writing it down subtracts from an experience, and in the end, unless a word is usable in a daily context it will be gone within a few months.

I think thats only the case if you have a shitty memory.

>>15

Just reading Schopenhauer writing about how reading makes you passively follow the thoughts of another person. And while reading the extract, I was always THINKING “Is that what I experience when I read?”, and remembering all those times when, while reading, I stopped and started challenging a point from the book or article, and all those times when it made me think of something else, or when I just took on myself to develop and refine a point from my own experience and knowledge.

So here I was, challenging Schopenhauer's point that when you read, you don't really think.

Reading isn't just ONE process (And the question “what do we do when we're reading” has multiple answers. It depends on the reader, the material being read, the situation, etc.)

No, but only intellectuals read books

>>27
see
>>3

The fuck's an intellectual?  Can he cast Magic Missile?

I think I can answer the OP's query by restating his question:

Does reading Soul Survivors: The Official Autobiography of Destiny's Child by Beyoncé Knowles make you an intellectual?

I used to have a great vocabulary, but I simplified my language simply because I don't have alot of intellectuals to talk to these days. It's just not practical to confuse people with words and make yourself look like a pompous ass... but sometimes I wish I was less lazy growing up, so I might've gone to a better university and become an intellectual. It must be great to just be an intellectual, in everyday life. Being intellectual and stuff.

>>31

Yeah, it is.

>>32
No, it's not.

>>33

Yeah, it is.

This is what intellectuals do all day long

>>34
No they don't.

So intellectuals have internet fights except in real life, while quoting philosophers and pushing up their glasses, etc.

>>1

Reading books doesn't necessarily make you an intellectual.

But not reading them at all makes you, well, American I guess.

>>35
Yes, they do.

>>38
Quite the contrary, they don't.

>>37
Hey!  I'll have you know we Americans read quite a bit!  Why, just the other day I purchased the autobiographies of quite possibly the greatest Americans on Earth: Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton.