Anti-Intellectualism = Good?

[Sage_Rat]

I have been reading the (so far awesome) book, Poor Economics, and it was discussing how poor families generally view education for their children as something like a lottery ticket, not something of intrinsic value. If a child is smart and educated, he might get hired by the government or a large business, make a lot of money, and help support the family. But if he doesn’t get one of those jobs, he’s basically of no more value than any other ditch digger.

What families do, then, is choose their smartest child and focus on getting him/her an education, while having their remaining children work in the field (or whatever the family business is). This way, they can hedge their bet and get the best possible chance of getting one financially successful child, while having the backup plan of the rest, to go the tried and proven path of manual labor.

The book suggests that it’s not just families but whole school system, government, and business world, that believe in and encourage intellectual elitism. You’re either gifted or you’re just as well working the fields.

The end result of this sort of system is an extreme income gap and purvasive poverty. The bottom rung of poverty is not lifted and there is no middle class (though some percentage of the upper class do come from lowest class.)

But reading this, it did occur to me that in American anti-intelectualist fiction, all of the great world-ending problems are always solved by the common joe, not the smartest guy in the room. Hard problems are solved by simple answers. Moral strength and leadership comes from being one of the average people and understanding their plight. Intellect just makes you act immorally.

Spreading ideas like this, potentially, are good because even if it’s the gifted people who end up doing the hard work and making sure that the world works, and subsequently demanding the big bucks, there’s still a lot of work that can be done to support them, that doesn’t require the best-of-the-best. (And of course, “gifted” does come in many forms. Business acumen and military strategy don’t seem to be particularly linked to IQ.) But it does take education and self-confidence to attain those positions. Minus the belief that being common or dumb is a key to success, children and their families might not put the effort into advancement that they otherwise could have had.

[monstro]

@Sage_Rat

But reading this, it did occur to me that in American anti-intelectualist fiction, all of the great world-ending problems are always solved by the common joe, not the smartest guy in the room. Hard problems are solved by simple answers. Moral strength and leadership comes from being one of the average people and understanding their plight. Intellect just makes you act immorally.

I’d like to see some examples of these “world-ending problems” being solved by common joes. Most of America’s esteemed heros–MLK, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, Jonas Salk, Helen Keller–were not common. They were both learned and quite intelligent.

[EdwinAmi]

'd like to see some examples of these “world-ending problems” being solved by common joes.

Dude, read what he said. He said in the movies.

[Der_Trihs]

@Sage_Rat

Spreading ideas like this, potentially, are good because even if it’s the gifted people who end up doing the hard work and making sure that the world works, and subsequently demanding the big bucks, there’s still a lot of work that can be done to support them, that doesn’t require the best-of-the-best.

No, it’s bad because it encourages the denial of reality (denial of evolution, anti-vaxxers, all sorts of ignorance-driven politics), and it encourages brutal, ruthless and stupid “solutions” to problems. Sophisticated, knowledge based solutions and tactics are looked at with disdain while violence and being “tough” are encouraged. No one cares what actually works because adhering to “common sense” and faith are admired instead of intelligence and knowledge.

And it’s a dead end. Those uneducated jobs are either being automated away or relegated to such poor pay and conditions no one but a desperate illegal immigrant will take them.

[EdwinAmi]

encourages brutal, ruthless and stupid “solutions” to problems

Problem is all those intellectuals are the ones who propose the most brutal, ruthless and stupid solutions of all. Well, not all the intellectuals, just the ones who make the biggest point about calling themselves intellectuals.

[DrCube]

I agree only in the narrow sense that our economy can/should use people of all intelligence/education levels, and also that we shouldn’t push people who don’t want to be a genius towards expensive schooling they can’t afford and don’t want.

But that’s not anti-intellectualism, that’s just “it takes all kinds”-ism.

[BrainGlutton]

Anti-intellectualism good! Bread good! Fire bad!

[orangeapples]

@EdwinAmi

Problem is all those intellectuals are the ones who propose the most brutal, ruthless and stupid solutions of all. Well, not all the intellectuals, just the ones who make the biggest point about calling themselves intellectuals.

I can’t think of a single case where that’s true, do you have some specific examples in mind?

@Sage_Rat

Spreading ideas like this, potentially, are good because even if it’s the gifted people who end up doing the hard work and making sure that the world works, and subsequently demanding the big bucks, there’s still a lot of work that can be done to support them, that doesn’t require the best-of-the-best. (And of course, “gifted” does come in many forms. Business acumen and military strategy don’t seem to be particularly linked to IQ.) But it does take education and self-confidence to attain those positions. Minus the belief that being common or dumb is a key to success, children and their families might not put the effort into advancement that they otherwise could have had.

(Excerpted from longer post)

The first part of that paragraph seems to suggest that this type of anti-intellectualism can be advantageous, that we should prop up the elite and keep the not-gifted out of their way. But then the last couple sentences of the same paragraph seem to suggest the opposite. So I’m not sure if I’m agreeing or disagreeing with you when I say that anti-intellectualism is not good. It is a bane, and does not serve us well. Willful ignorance is the worst kind of ignorance.

[Sage_Rat]

@orangeapples

I can’t think of a single case where that’s true, do you have some specific examples in mind?

Neither can I, outside of fiction. I don’t believe that any of Pol Pot, Stalin, nor our formerly beloved President GW Bush were particularly elite, before stepping into the big ring. Whereas people like Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln were certainly among the intellectual elite (though Lincoln did a good job of playing up his common beginnings).

The first part of that paragraph seems to suggest that this type of anti-intellectualism can be advantageous, that we should prop up the elite and keep the not-gifted out of their way.

That’s the exact opposite of what I said. I said that the elite (if the term has value) are always going to be a minority, and that limits what they can do. If you give them an educated workforce to interact with, they can accomplish more, because they can leave issues that don’t require the best possible answer to others, they can pass off grunt work, like tracking down data, writing up pretty pamphlets, or nailing things together, onto people who are capable of those tasks, while managing the overall status of the project and overseeing the capabilities of all the workers and routing them intelligently. In occupations that are less physical, like advertising, the top dog can throw out ideas to a group of people who aren’t as good, and have hundreds of options to select from along those lines, and work with the top selections to get the details just right to maximize success.

Human intellect is a spectrum of possibilities, not just a binary “smart” or “dumb”. Even if a task requires the best and brightest, it’s likely that the best and brightest could break that task into smaller parts, many of which could still employ a person with an IQ of 80. And the more he can delegate out the parts which don’t require him, the more he can focus on the parts which do.

So I’m not sure if I’m agreeing or disagreeing with you when I say that anti-intellectualism is not good. It is a bane, and does not serve us well. Willful ignorance is the worst kind of ignorance.

But in the real world, I think most people do accept when someone else is outdoing them. They know when to step back and let the man who really knows his stuff take the lead.

Certainly, you can have a problem if someone has too much power and too little capability relative to his level of confidence in himself. But that’s still better than having a small group of 1/1000th the population trying to do everything, and the remaining 999/1000th of everyone picking cotton and shitting in the local river.

While the anti-intellectualist idea might puff some people up who shouldn’t be, what if you need people to believe that there’s going to be that day when they have the one good idea in the room, and save the universe from King Koopa, before they’re going to really try and become the best that they can be?

[orangeapples]

@Sage_Rat

That’s the exact opposite of what I said. I said that the elite (if the term has value) are always going to be a minority, and that limits what they can do. If you give them an educated workforce to interact with, they can accomplish more, because they can leave issues that don’t require the best possible answer to others, they can pass off grunt work, like tracking down data, writing up pretty pamphlets, or nailing things together, onto people who are capable of those tasks, while managing the overall status of the project and overseeing the capabilities of all the workers and routing them intelligently. In occupations that are less physical, like advertising, the top dog can throw out ideas to a group of people who aren’t as good, and have hundreds of options to select from along those lines, and work with the top selections to get the details just right to maximize success.

Human intellect is a spectrum of possibilities, not just a binary “smart” or “dumb”. Even if a task requires the best and brightest, it’s likely that the best and brightest could break that task into smaller parts, many of which could still employ a person with an IQ of 80. And the more he can delegate out the parts which don’t require him, the more he can focus on the parts which do.

(Excerpted from longer post)

Sorry I misconstrued your earlier remarks, I read through them a couple of times and simply could not get it to track. And thank you for the clarity. We do not disagree, anti-intellectualism is pretty dumb. Up with brainiacs.

[Bozuit]

Maybe it’s just me, but this thread is very confusing.

First of all, Sage Rat, what do you mean by “anti-intellectualism”? Because, to me, it generally means rejection of education (and reality) in favour of “common sense” and a confusion between Saturday morning cartoons and the real world, as demonstrated by EdwinAmi. Do you mean something else?

And what is your stance on anti-intellectualism, as you use the term?

Are you just saying we shouldn’t cause the smart-but-not-smartest to miss out due to over-investment in the smartest people?

[epbrown01]

@Sage_Rat

Neither can I, outside of fiction. I don’t believe that any of Pol Pot, Stalin, nor our formerly beloved President GW Bush were particularly elite, before stepping into the big ring. Whereas people like Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln were certainly among the intellectual elite (though Lincoln did a good job of playing up his common beginnings).
[snip]

But in the real world, I think most people do accept when someone else is outdoing them. They know when to step back and let the man who really knows his stuff take the lead.

If the second bolded part is true, why do politicians do the first bolded part? From what I’ve seen, most politicians play down their intellectual accomplishments and when his opponents played up how average Bush2 was, no one really cared he wasn’t a Rhodes scholar or editor of the Law Review.

[bump]

Anti-intellectualism is bad, in that it tends to glorify being uneducated and disparage education.

I think there are a couple parts to it that play into US anti-intellectualism.

1. A lot of people have a real problem with anything not immediately practical. This is kind of like the grownup equivalent of the kids you knew in high school crowing about how stupid some course was because they couldn’t see the everyday practical aspect of the class. These folks have a real problem with resources being spent on things that they don’t see as immediately practical, and in my experience at least, that’s a LOT of stuff.

2. A lot of people conflate education with social class, and are really engaging in something more akin to class warfare than actual anti-intellectualism. There’s a lot of crabs-in-the-pot harassment that goes on in some communities about people going off to college, because it’s perceived as them trying to set themselves up as “better” than the rest of the community. It’s not the learning itself that’s the problem, it’s the actual perceived benefits of the learning. Or there’s resentment against educated people because they’re successful, not because they’re educated.

[orangeapples]

@bump

Anti-intellectualism is bad, in that it tends to glorify being uneducated and disparage education.

I think there are a couple parts to it that play into US anti-intellectualism.

1. A lot of people have a real problem with anything not immediately practical. This is kind of like the grownup equivalent of the kids you knew in high school crowing about how stupid some course was because they couldn’t see the everyday practical aspect of the class. These folks have a real problem with resources being spent on things that they don’t see as immediately practical, and in my experience at least, that’s a LOT of stuff.

2. A lot of people conflate education with social class, and are really engaging in something more akin to class warfare than actual anti-intellectualism. There’s a lot of crabs-in-the-pot harassment that goes on in some communities about people going off to college, because it’s perceived as them trying to set themselves up as “better” than the rest of the community. It’s not the learning itself that’s the problem, it’s the actual perceived benefits of the learning. Or there’s resentment against educated people because they’re successful, not because they’re educated.

I would suggest a third category as well; resenting the infringement of knowledge on one’s belief system. When presented with information that challenges what one holds most dear, or calls into question one’s way of life, or even threatens to impact the bottom line, then it’s time to attack the messenger and demean the message. That’s what I think of when I hear ‘anti-intellectualism’, anyway.

[Sage_Rat]

@bump

Anti-intellectualism is bad, in that it tends to glorify being uneducated and disparage education.

I don’t think I’ve seen any Hollywood movies or other common-man’s fiction that encourages a complete lack of education. Do you have any examples?

@bump

1. A lot of people have a real problem with anything not immediately practical. This is kind of like the grownup equivalent of the kids you knew in high school crowing about how stupid some course was because they couldn’t see the everyday practical aspect of the class. These folks have a real problem with resources being spent on things that they don’t see as immediately practical, and in my experience at least, that’s a LOT of stuff.

@orangeapples

I would suggest a third category as well; resenting the infringement of knowledge on one’s belief system. When presented with information that challenges what one holds most dear, or calls into question one’s way of life, or even threatens to impact the bottom line, then it’s time to attack the messenger and demean the message. That’s what I think of when I hear ‘anti-intellectualism’, anyway.

Again, I don’t know that I have seen either of these encouraged by fiction? You seem more to be talking about the reality of a particular, annoying sect of the common man, than any sort of popular subcurrent of fiction.

[Stringbean]

It is a worrying trend to see Republican figures bashing a university education as though it were some black stain on their being.

That being said, “intellectuals” tend to be insufferable pricks and that certainly contributes to no one liking them.

[Fuzzy_wuzzy]

I think think of a number of intellectual movements have had either disastrous or dubious results. Though not always out at the hands of intellectuals. For instance Eugenics in the early part of the 20th century. In order to judge intellectuals and related movements it is best to look at the past not the present. Many of such movements have turned out to be fads. If past movements have been fads then some of todays movements likely fall under the same category. On a not so serious scale as Communism or Fascism but much of mid 20th century architecture had an intellectual ideology behind it. Only 20 years later such building were looked on as eyesores by the next generation.

[Bozuit]

What makes a movement an “intellectual movement”?

[Fuzzy_wuzzy]

@Bozuit

What makes a movement an “intellectual movement”?

To be honest I dont think the question is an important one. It’s difficult to define precisely. If anything its a convenient catch all term for clever folk throughout history. Clever folk who aligned themselves to certain ideologies or beliefs at a certain time period. Some of which have proven to be beneficial and long lasting, some of which have been of a temporary nature or discredited.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anthropometry

[Justin_Bailey]

@EdwinAmi

Dude, read what he said. He said in the movies.

And it rarely exists there either. “Anti-intellectualism” in movies as something to strive for is pretty much solely limited to gross-out comedies. Typically ones starring Adam Sandler. Your average big budget blockbusters (Jurassic Park, Independence Day, The Avengers, the Batman movies) all solve their world-ending problems thanks to the smartest guy in the room (who is often initially stymied by the idiots in elected office).