How to become an intellectual?

 I think that intellectualism cannot be brought out only from the reading. Reading is the essential and the first phase in nourishing the mind with information. And, getting information alone is not intellectualism; it just shows that a person has a good memory. Intellectualism has to do with the way we deal with these information. In the following line, there will be the different tools and ways on how to build intellectualism. 

The first thing is, to become an Intellectual, in my humble opinion, is to love knowledge and the world of ideas, to fall in love with what in unknown and the discovery, to fall in love with science and what is beyond science. The love is going to make you taste it. Enjoy it, and kill all sorts of boredom. When you fall in love with that, and when you finally taste it, you are going to feel every time as if you are drinking water and never want to stop. Finally, falling in love with something, will make you stay connected to it, let us say that you create a sort of energy, positive energy that makes you be happy, that your time is fulfilled, that you are growing, so you go back to it each time. (I know that you taste what I am writing right now because I did) Second, make an objective and then forget about it and focus on the work. I give you an example; your big goal is to be an intellectual. Your objective for example is to learn in science, History, and psychology. Then here you go, forget about the objectives and focus only on the readings, the research, and the videos you watch. (We are coming on the hows). When you focus on that only, you put less pressure on yourself, you are going to feel restful, perform better, you will not rush results but rather feel the growth, and get modesty that you do this just for yourself not to talk and appear intellectual. The focus on the work will show us that the more we learn the more we were not that informed in the past. But, what is behind the big goal? If being an intellectual is the big goal then why I am working on my intellectualism? This will be understood in the coming lines. The purpose of intellectualism is to grow in a community as a group of people who were born for a purpose. It is a necessity to share what is correct and help in the vanishing of what is wrong or illogical to grow (because in Arts and humanities, we do not deal with facts, but theories. Theories should be understood logically in the expense of the contexts we may have). Besides, intellectualism will achieve the understanding and this way, being decent and classy in this life because you apply the correct things on life. (You may have better ideas for that, enlighten me, please). Intellectualism should build consciousness. The first step to achieve consciousness is to learn about the concept fully when you start. Here we use an example; imagine that you want to get knowledge in a topic of psychology. Imagine that this topic is related to self esteem. This topic is about: confidence, arrogance, narcissism, and lack of trust. (I always enjoy giving this example even with my students because it is so common in our society. In this society we need to reform the understanding of the concepts in any field, being in psychology, concepts of freedom, ethics, logic, rationality, love...) we rely so much on our subconscious in our society. However, imagine that you have this topic, you may misunderstand confidence for arrogance, you may see someone confident behaviours for being arrogance because of the sub-conscious ideas. When you understand the concepts fully then you will not mistaken his behaviour again; this in a way going to be the same for all the concepts in life without neglecting any. Finally, the consciousness will make you think before going to any judgement, that behind anything there are definitions, and those definitions of ideas may justify the reality being correct or wrong, so here we go, you start to think for the reasons, the problems, the solutions, then we reach the growth.Let us move to the way "how to deal with the information". Now, when you bring the books, you read them, take notes or just do not do it, but keep in mind the headlines in every page or paragraph you read. The general ideas are the final results of your understanding, and they are going to be used then with another book. Yes, getting knowledge is not concerned with one resource, you read another book in the same topic, and then you put both ideas under the scope of analysis. When you analyse and understand, you manage to get out with your own ideas what we call in Literature a discourse. The discourse is the established words or ideas in the study and then it will enter the mind in the shape of fresh information that is not learnt by heart but understood. It means that intellectualism comes in the sort of thinking and understanding. Intellectualism is the management of the ideas we find in books, or we watch in the documentaries. The intellectual person will not be accepting anything that comes his way without understanding it and asking questions. He always looks behind the reasons and being conscious rather than learn everything by heart and follows his sub-consciousness. Then, watch videos about the topic, do the same thing after reading the book, use the information you have to gather with what you found in books, then write a comment about them all in a note book or share them with your friends; when you do that, and when you share them with your friends, you give space for more opened options of the understanding to be given and the correction of the ideas if being wrong or illogical.Talking about friends, this leads me to the most important step of building intellectualism; the intellectual discussions. Discussions are made to grow by the personality, the thinking, and the learning. Talk exchange and mature discussions are the fuel of the learning. Let me tell you, when your friend gives you for example a quote and tells you how it affected him, then do not feel offended if you know this quote and as if he is treating you that you are ignorant or something. No. Look, enter into a discussion with him, talk about it even if you know it, be spontaneous, it is in this way that one grows because surely he learned newly about this quote, but it doesn't not mean that you do not know or the opposite. Just be spontaneous. (Remember, the focus) .Mentioning the newly intellectuals, do not worry if you talk with someone who read 9000 books and you read just 3 books in your life because you were busy graduating from The faculty of mathematics. Remember when I told you that intellectualism is not the number of books we read but the use of the information and the ideas in those books. He could be reading 50 books in psychology and you just 2 books, but when you discuss with him, then you will blow his mind in the understanding better than he does because he was busy reading much. Here you go; quality beats quantity no matter what. In three years you can reach his number of books or more, but if he does not know how to use the information, he would be first of all forgetting what he learnt by heart through time, he would always be the same person because he did not use these ideas in reality, he doesn't know how to be decent, he does not achieve a change in the community. I am not in anyways criticising him (this unknown person) I am giving remarks in what is wrong, so this is what it should not be done when we work on being intellectuals and we should correct it. The quality matters because you can read books at any time in your life. You can gather information at any moment of your life. Do not rush things, you can reach it at any time (Be spontaneous, and then you will have a Quality of Quantity). Intellectual people do not show how many books they read (yes, they share with their friends, they mention the title of some books "this too, do not be offended when someone talks in intellectualism, it doesn't mean that someone is sharing his passion, is not intellectual, it depends on the situation do not use your sub-conscious" they write summaries, they analyse them, we have readers blog, I guess you understand what I mean, if not text me). Anyways, Sharing and showing doesn't come for the sake of showing to people about us, just remember the focus.An intellectual is someone who is a perceiver; it means that his options are always opened for better understanding. He does not jump by conclusions, he does not judge. He doesn't show off. He is always listening and learning. For example, a friend of yours can mention something in History that you have known before, but you keep listening to him because you perceive that he may give you better than what you do know, he may add information that can be used in the analysis later, an analysis that can be created in that moment between you two through the discussion. The listening is all important; perceiving will lead us to a growth, to a development of thinking and understanding then a better application on reality. When an intellectual knows and witnesses that there is wrong in his society, that there is something not logical and should be changed. He acts with modesty and without looking at them from above because he also once was in that position of not knowing, or even if he grew up learning this and knowing it, he should be grateful for the gift he has been given, he should not talk a lot about himself, but he should talk about the ideas without addressing people personally, or with mocking and laughing at others. He should not show how far he reached in life considering it intellectualism, because this is just for pride and something out of intellectualism. I am not saying do not celebrate or have fun, I am not saying do not talk about yourself, do it, but do not mix self addressing parole with intellectualism. At The end, intellectualism is in a way made to build consciousness, to create a change in the society. Use what you learnt in changing some wrong or illogical ideas with humble, you may mistaken in your way of doing that. It is okay because it is human. Just always focus, consider the listening and the learning from the others, be a perceiver, and be confident with modesty. It is important to use what we learn in our behaviour and get a classy attitude towards life. Intellectualism is going to teach us how to deal with situations, too. Odd new situations, for example, when you face a problem, you do not deal with it using what you learn by heart (your sub-conscious), but you should at a moment create something, understand it, and use the possible, most logical solutions for the matter, you should think. And remember, be always original, be the best version of who you are.