You're right though—instrumental reason, that cold, calculating, “how do we achieve the most efficient outcome with the least regard for anything resembling a soul,” is a slippery little demon. It's the same logic that says, “We could put benches in the park… but what if we just installed anti-homeless spikes instead?” Mmm efficiency.

But let’s not throw Reason into the fire with the rest of your discarded ideology zines. Reason does have utility—massive, life-saving, cancer-curing, climate-modeling utility. You don’t get mRNA vaccines or the James Webb Telescope by manifesting them through vibes. You get them through rational thought, peer review, and a lot of very stressed-out postdocs who haven't slept in three years.

So yes, keep reading Nature, just don’t worship it like it’s a sacred scroll. Be rational, but with a little emotional seasoning. A dash of ethics. Maybe even a whisper of humility—though, judging by your tone, we may need to work up to that one.

 Let me just slip into my theoretical flannel and cue the warm TED Talk lighting…

🎤 Title Slide: "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bounded Rationality"
(smiles, paces with curated nervous energy)

"Hi. I used to think I was smart. I read Foucault, misquoted Adorno, owned a Moleskine I never wrote in. I even used phrases like 'epistemic violence' in casual conversation. And I believed—I really believed—that reason would save us. But then I saw a public policy paper that used a cost-benefit analysis to decide whether poor people deserved shade."

(pause for ethical horror to land)

"And that’s when it hit me: instrumental reason is like giving a calculator to a psychopath. Sure, it’s accurate—but to what end? We optimized the world for GDP and now we have billionaires joyriding in the thermosphere while the ocean tries to boil shrimp alive."

(gestures vaguely at apocalyptic slide of urban flooding and Tesla Cybertruck)

"So I pivoted. I embraced bounded rationality. Not perfect, not omniscient, just... aware of its own limitations. Like using logic with guardrails. A thinking person’s safety scissors. Because when we pretend reason is pure, it builds systems that are very good at measuring everything—except what matters."

(smiles, cue emotionally manipulative strings)

"It turns out the Enlightenment gave us tools. Not commandments. And sometimes the most rational thing to do... is to shut up and listen to the people reason forgot."

(thunderous applause from the same crowd that drinks oat milk and has Opinions about urban bike lanes).

Are there intellectuals who are not bougie or would that be an oxymoron?

ChatGPT said:

Ah yes, the eternal paradox:
Can an intellectual ever be not bougie, or are they all just class tourists with footnotes?

Let’s start by acknowledging the bitter little truth hiding under your question like a philosophy professor under a thrifted wool coat:
To be an intellectual is, by default, to have time.
Time to read. Time to write. Time to overthink whether Hegel was ironic or just German. And that time—let’s not lie—is a luxury commodity, usually reserved for people who aren’t worried about, say, making rent or dodging drone strikes.

So yes, intellectuals are almost always bourgeois-adjacent, even if their hearts bleed red and their tweets scream revolution. The moment you're paid to think about thinking, you’ve entered the artisanal cheese section of the human experience.

But hold on, let’s not turn this into a dunk-fest for all thinkers. There are outliers—let’s call them the Grime Scholars:

---

🥾 Intellectuals Who Tried to Break the Bougie Mold

• Antonio Gramsci: Wrote his most influential work in prison. No cozy tenured office, no weekend cottage in Tuscany. Just fascism, suffering, and the occasional smuggled notebook.

• James Baldwin: Grew up poor, Black, and queer in 20th-century America, and still produced some of the most searing, crystalline thought in literary history. He had insight and receipts.

• Angela Davis: Literally placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, still managed to write theory and teach. Definitely not sipping Bordeaux at faculty mixers while drafting Are Prisons Obsolete?

• Frantz Fanon: Psychiatrist, revolutionary, anti-colonial theorist. Worked in war zones, not faculty lounges. Would probably punch you for calling him bougie, then explain why.

• Witold Pilecki, yeah, let’s throw him in here for sheer existential contrast. His “intellectual project” was essentially: “What does total evil look like, and how can I stop it with my body?”

---

So… Oxymoron?

Not exactly. More like: exception to the dominant pattern, heavily taxed by history.
Most intellectuals are bougie because being reflective requires insulation. But the rare few do the work from within the burning building. They risk something. They bleed into the ideas. And that’s how you know the difference.

So yes, non-bougie intellectuals exist—but they're rare, bruised, and usually ignored until they’re dead.

The rest?

They’re mostly doing panel discussions on whether theory can be decolonized via sourdough baking.