Thanks for your glowing praise, ard: I consider being called an intellectual a fine compliment.

I started this thread with a comment made by someone who loved bluegrass and didn't like what he thought of as folk music. It wasn't my comment. He didn't say he didn't like singer/songwriters (a term that wasn't in vogue when he said it) or snigger snogwriters. He thought of folk music as protest songs. Penny's Farm is a protest song, as are many anti-war and civil rights songs. He didn't like songs that preach. Somehow, this conversation has wandered into whether it's some singer/songwriters or some traditional purists who are responsible for the decreased national interest in folk music. It's a false argument, in my opinion. Folk music isn't hitting the charts because the pop music world is fickle and driven by commercial factors, not musical.

As for myself, I do consider "intellectual" to be a positive quality.
I don't equate it with well-educated, necessarily. In my college days, most of the kids I went to school with were going to college for materialistic reasons, not intellectual. Not that there was anything inherently wrong in their goals, either. They went to college so that they could get a better-paying, more interesting job.
Not many went out of intellectual curiosity. Like everyone else, I've know many people who I consider "intellectual" who never went to college who have no idea who Sarte or Dostoyevsky were. My perception of a person who is "intellectual" is someone who has a curious, open mind, who reflects on their life and desires to understand those who are different than them. They are not just inward looking (0r navel-gazing.) They seek to understand the world around them. I think someone who is truly intellectual is tolerant and non-judgmental, because they see the complexity of life and recognize their own limitations. Those are all qualities that are desireable.

There is a big difference between being an intellectual and being an intellectual snob. Someone who thinks that their education and sophistication makes them superior to those who never had the same opportunities or desires is not an intellectual in my mind.

I don't measure people on their level of education or their sophistication. Some of the wisest people I've known and admired were not formally educated or widely read. It was their approach to understanding and appreciating their life, and their willingness to accept that other ways of life have their value too that made them "intellectual" in my mind.

To me, being intellectual above anything else means having an open, cuorious mind. My Mother is an intellectual and she grew up on a dairy farm in a town of less than 1,000 population, never went to college and isn't a reader. She is an observer and a thinker.

Jerry