#newintelligentsia

The Intellectual Revolution started with small acts, none of which was likely intended to start a movement.

Like this one: In the old days. retailers routinely used to market with the phrase "buy one get one free" which, with the influence of internet and social media culture, was shortened to "BOGO" for the convenience of the acronym. It wasn't long before someone pointed out that "buy one, get one" was outright silly. Of course paying for one thing ought to get you one thing; what the retailers were really saying was "buy one, get TWO", so stores tripped all over themselves to start advertising BOGT sales. Once someone coined the pronunciation "baw-G-t" as a variation on "bought" with a hard G sound, anyone using BOGO was quickly dismissed as ignorant and unworthy of consumer dollars. Acts like this were fun, and became more popular, and took on a life of their own.

Thus began the Great Enlightening. A handful of years ago, people decided they wanted to elevate themselves: read more, eliminate mindless TV, use bigger words, learn Calculus for fun. Of course many took a few public steps in this direction, like proclaiming their new Duo-lingo accounts (complete with a few choice words in a new language) or sharing screenshots of their fitness apps giving them a virtual high five. The whole world, it seemed, was on a self-improvement kick of epic size.

While many actually did this work, finding themselves suddenly able to run an 8 minute mile or sit through Pride and Prejudice for the first time since it was assigned in ninth grade, there was a much larger population that started in earnest, but whose efforts eventually flopped. But by then the damage was done: after a hard day's work faking enlightenment, those who would privately sit and endlessly scroll through their social media accounts found their feeds populated more and more by #newintelligentsia posts.

That's how it all started. Over time, and without many people noticing, culture adjusted. Reality TV shows disappeared, first one at a time, then en masse, replaced with shows hosting book clubs and academic debates. Snack cakes went away after declines in sales as sugar addiction awareness became common. Grocery stores expanded their fresh produce sections and "farm to table" stands began popping up even in urban centers. Math clubs started popping up off university campuses, and the Hodge Conjecture was solved by a 14 year old girl named Eshe Fajah.

As everyone got 'better', it became a competition, as do all things humans do. This fed the frenzy. Yoga studios once relegated fitness freaks and spiritual nut jobs became as popular as dollar stores, and abandoned their paid membership structure for a drop-in business model. Nutritional awareness became the norm, and even closeted slackers got healthier in spite of themselves. Even religion got a makeover: the King James, NIV, and other "modern" versions of the Bible were all tossed as ignorant tripe, and large editions of the full apocrypha were being published without translation. Forced to learn Hebrew, ancient Greek, and the like in order to worship, a new generation of religious scholars was born.

It's been a nice decade or two of human development. And here we are today, when the US Congress announced that all future laws adopted by the legislature will be written and debated in Latin. This was to appease the general public, which took up the cause of a social media poster who created alternate versions of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, still on yellowed, aging parchment, still in slanted, handwritten calligraphy, but in the major classical languages of the world: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, old Germanic, etc.