Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Sheep Get Sheared podcast and today I want to
discuss the idea of being an intellectual nomad.
Now if you don't know me, my name is Austin Creed, I'm glad that you're listening to
the show, but we're going to talk about what it means to be an intellectual nomad.
You might ask me where I came up with this concept or why we're even talking about it.
Well first I want to say I've come up with multiple different ideas on the show.
All centered around the concept of understanding how you're being exploited and understanding
how people are trying to manipulate you and trying to play your misunderstanding or misnomers
of the world to their advantage against you.
And the intellectual nomad kind of pairs up with being a biblical bachelor, it pays
up with being a Ronin.
And what it means to be an intellectual nomad is to understand that you are walking in the
vast wilderness.
I want you to, if you're able to, I want you to close your eyes and concentrate real
hard and picture yourself as a man walking down a trail alone.
So it's a very narrow trail going up a very steep mountain.
And below you down the mountain, you see the broad road.
Lot of people are walking down this path, broad foot traffic.
Lot of people seeming like they're happy, they're happy go lucky, they're doing their
thing and you feel like, oh man, I'm taking the hard road.
Why would I take the hard road when I can take the easy road?
Why go the extra mile when I don't have to?
Why blaze my own trail when there's a perfectly good looking trail right there in front of
me?
Why would I take this?
Well, my friend, you're asking a good question.
And good questions require answers that will not only satisfy your curiosity, but are going
to give you more further food for thought.
And so that's what being an intellectual nomad is.
For those of you who don't know what a nomad is, nomad is a reference to the nomadic tribes.
Nomadic tribes of years gone by and some of those still exist to this day in certain
areas in the world where they would follow the herds.
They would never just lived in one place like how a lot of civilizations were based off
agriculture.
Excuse me, sorry.
A lot of them are based off of agriculture.
So when you're based off of agriculture, you stay in one place to grow the crops, to raise
the animals, to build a civilization.
Usually it's based off of a river or if you're a coastal town, it's based off of the marine
life and the agriculture.
But when you're a nomadic tribe, say for example, like certainly an American tribe, like the
Lakota, who followed the buffalo, this is an example of a nomadic tribe.
People who never truly had one home per se, but they always traveled around.
They made their home wherever they laid their herds, wherever they were.
That's where home was.
And I think it's important for us to understand what it means to be an intellectual nomad
if we want to know a lot of people that don't want to know what it means to blaze your own
trail.
Be somebody who is set apart, who is choosing to be different, not just to be different,
but because that they don't fully identify with any one singular lifestyle, religion,
life system or anything like that, they feel like they have not been represented thus far
by anything that they've encountered.
And so what happens is then they don't know where to go.
They don't know which way to turn.
I mean, if you had, if you say, for example, if you were in high school and you went to
the fair, the club fair and you're going down the club fair and you see the astronomy
club, the science club, the basketball club, the dodgeball club, a math club.
And it would not have been appeals to you.
You might like math.
You might like playing dodgeball, whatever, but you don't want to just commit yourself
to that one thing because you're not sure it fully is you.
Being an intellectual nomad means that you don't just put yourself in one place.
You don't just have one simple belief system that can be easily defined.
You are a complex creature who's trying to find the truth, even if you hate it, you
want to find truth.
You need to find the truth.
Even if there's such a thing exists and you're not completely sure that it does, but you
want it to be real.
So what happens is you go and you look for it.
You go looking for the truth because you're convinced that exists.
You think it's out there.
You think you're fine, then you know what you're looking for, but you're not sure you're always
looking for it the same way that nomads are always looking for new pastures, new fresh
game, new fresh sometimes people to invade.
These are all examples that you can turn from real life examples into mental examples.
You might not agree with everything I say or everything that your pastor says or another
content creator or a friend or a family member, and that's fine and very normal, by the way.
I don't understand people who agree with anything anybody ever says because to me, it's just
not something normal.
Being an intellectual nomad means you're not going to just subscribe to one thing, like
just say, oh, I am this period.
I am a Republican or I am a Democrat or I am, oh, I don't know.
It could be anything.
Sorry, it's three o'clock in the morning here.
I'm trying to try to drive back to the house because I took a wrong turn.
And because people in Kansas are so smart, they say, hey, you know what?
You made one wrong turn on a toll road.
Well, now you get to go 30 minutes in the wrong direction and pay the toll going the
wrong direction.
But anyways, this is just me learning how to adult, I guess.
You want to if you want to call it that, I suppose you wouldn't be wrong to say that.
But my friends going back to the intellectual nomad conversation, you might have beliefs
that I don't agree with, just as I have beliefs you don't agree with.
In my opinion, that is what makes for good conversation because it's not about being
right.
It's about understanding people who are different and being willing to say, you know what?
I agree with that.
I mean, you know, maybe I don't agree with that and being able to really wrestle with
it and say, hey, I want to really play with this idea of maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe you're right or vice versa and being able to accept the outcome, but play with
the idea.
I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about because it might not be making sense
and you might not fully be understanding what I'm talking about.
So I might, Jim, I have a personal trainer and he's a great guy and I like to talk to
him about sports while we're working out.
And when we talk about sports, we'll talk about football, basketball, basketball, we'll
talk about baseball.
We'll talk about all these different things, right?
And while we're talking about it, to me, I figure the conversation was normal.
For example, let's say, oh, I think this guy is better than that guy or I think this
team is better at this era or whatever.
And I'm never like, oh, that's stupid.
I always pause and I say, you know what?
I'm not super knowledgeable about sports.
Truth be told, I'm not a huge sports nut.
So what I say is, you know what?
Maybe you're right, but let's talk about it.
I could be right wrong, but let's talk about it.
Let's have a conversation.
Who's, you know, is LeBron the best in the game right now?
Is was he better than Michael Jordan?
Well, I don't know.
Well, let's look at it.
Let's talk about it.
I don't think I necessarily I know for certain because it's not my job to know.
It's not a hobby of mine to know.
So I just talk about it.
And I remember him saying, he said, you know what?
Often, I appreciate the fact that you don't just walk into the conversation with trying
to tell me I'm wrong or tell me this or tell me that.
Like you genuinely want to just talk about it.
You want to exchange ideas and not just push your agenda down my throat.
And I said, yes, I'm glad that you noticed that because I don't ever want to come across
being that guy who's just shoving my agenda down your throat or telling you that I'm right.
You're wrong.
And you don't know what you're talking about.
Now are there times where I will do that in, for example, politics where I think it's extremely
black and white?
Sure.
But in general, I do I attempt not to do that because then it robs people of the ability
to express their belief system in a way that maybe I had thought about it before.
Maybe I hadn't seen it from your perspective because I don't have your life experience
and doing and then being abrasive unnecessarily.
I lose out on the ability to learn and grow as an individual and expand my mental horizon.
And when you are not able to do that, not only is it extremely unattractive to people
who would normally want to be in your life, whether it be romantically, botanically or
professionally, what it does is it robs you personally of the ability to learn something,
grow, expand, and then doing so you have just lost out on a potential new ability to capitalize
on compound interest.
That is why I believe it is important to be open to the intellectual nomadic lifestyle.
Now I'm not saying that you have no core beliefs.
One has core beliefs.
You get distinguishing between what you are willing to discuss and what you maybe aren't
so willing to discuss.
But not being dogmatic, not being not being super definitive in a way that you're not
going to at least question beliefs that you're whole true.
If you're not going to put your beliefs to the test, you are doing yourself a big disservice.
Anything I talked about on the show, whether it relates to women, money, work, all of religion,
all of those things I put to the test actively both currently I will in the future and I
have in the past.
Because I want to make sure that I'm not full of hot air.
It might come as a surprise to you, especially those of you who listen to the show regularly,
but I have doubts.
I am uncertain.
I'm a human being.
But guess what?
I test my theories.
I tell the stories as receipts and accountability to you, my friends, not just audience, but
my friends who are here on this journey with me, not only through the show, but through
this journey we call life, this adventure of life.
And life is can be linear in a lot of ways, but it can also be something that's completely
crazy, unexpected, uncalled for, unsolicited.
Sorry, I'm losing my voice because I don't have a lot of water left.
But this is what's going to lead you down the path of being an intellectual nomad is
being able to not just be dogmatic to open your mind to something that maybe you had
never thought about before.
And maybe you didn't think was possible, but now it is.
Now you're playing with the idea and you'll either accept it or reject it.
And that is crucial.
That is important.
My friends, I want to challenge you to be an intellectual nomad and opening your mind
to being right or wrong, testing your beliefs.
It's crucial to growing as an individual, in my opinion.
I want to do more.
I'm just starting to lose my voice a little bit.
So I'll see how much longer my voice will last.
My friends, it's crucial for your growth as a man, a woman, alien, I don't know who you
are.
But it's important for your growth to test your currently held beliefs, to not just
believe them because you want to or because you want people you like believe them, but
to believe them because you've actively put them to the test.
You put them up against the fire of truth and you've burned out the impurities.
You ironed out the insecurities and you put forward the hard, cold, honest truth that
you use as a sword to cut through the lies and deception that you will encounter every
day of your life.
I use sword not shield because you must cut through the darkness to find likeminded people
into seek the light that will lead you to the road you have set out for yourself.
What friends?
It's important that we have open conversations like this because if you are not willing to
be intellectually nomadic to some extent, whether it's fully or partially, then you're
missing out on the opportunities to expand your horizons and become someone better, greater,
and more intuitive than you were before.
My friends, you take care of yourselves.
Leave your thoughts, please, please leave your comments and thoughts in the comments
below.
I would love to hear what you have to say, whether you think I'm right, wrong, the stare,
or foul, I want to hear all of it.
My friends, take care of yourselves and I'm out of here.
You take care.
Peace.