Ambrose Bierce once defined mad as being "affected with a high degree of intellectual independence." I agree with this statement because I often find myself mad at the conformity and ignorant acceptance of  our surroundings by my fellow human beings. I feel that people are generally intimidated by being intellectually independent in fear of losing social acceptance. I fear that if people don't become brave enough to challenge the status quo and question what's around us, our society will dwindle down into a meaningless wasteland of unoriginality, mindless social obedience, and will be overall unproductive.

     Naturally, with intelligence, there comes anger. People who are intelligent view the world with a scrutinizing perspective. Now I'm not saying that we're all cynics (only a large chunk of us are), but what I am saying is that we question and analyze what we see. When intellectuals see something that is wrong with society, we zoom in on it, we realize it is a problem and that it must be changed one way or another. All change in the World has been brought about by original ideas and the examination of our surroundings. We've seen it all throughout history, in every time period- people who believe their government is corrupt, people who want freedom, people who want change, whatever it may be. These are the people that make the world go around, the people that make change happen, the people that fix what is broken, the people who achieve. These are the people from which productivity & societal growth derive from.

     Just as intelligence brings anger, ignorance brings bliss (unfortunately, it also brings it's evil twin: stupidity.) If one is unaware of all of the horrible things that go on around them, naturally, they will be content with the way things are in their society. You may think, "what's wrong with people being happy?" Nothing is wrong with being happy, but there are a plethora of things wrong with being ignorant. For one, ignorance spawns the disregard of problems, & if problems are never recognized, they will never be fixed & we will never learn, change, or grow as a society.

     I am an observer of people and I always have been. When I look around, I see smiling, laughing, not a care in the world. You ask these people how they feel about current affairs and they either have no idea what you're talking about, pretend like they know what you're talking about, or give a vague, unintelligible response. It scares me that my peers don't know what's going on in the World. I mean, one day these people will be voting for our presidents and making critical decisions for the future of our country and they don't even know what's going on politically today. If these mentalities continue to plague my generation, I am genuinely worried for our future.