Of course not.
You aren’t the richest, most industrially-advanced nation that leads the world in innovation and technology by being “anti-intellectual” or “anti-science.”
You think the bottom 50% of any nation are the Darwins shedding light on the world?
No. They’re the same dumbfucks that reside in every country.
Thread is a snooze.
I think perhaps it reflects some of the uneasiness societies have with globalisation. A well educated person is one plugged into a myriad of societies/systems of thought beyond their own. Someone who is well educated and well versed in foreign mores perhaps presents a threat to how your/our/anyone’s social system is ordered.
Well, we might be marching to a Kornbluth world.
When the dumbfucks say “I have a clue about how this here computer works but I can watch porn on it so I’m happy” there is no problem. But when the 51% of dumbfucks say “Climate change? Global warming? It snowed last winter. It’s all a hoax.” then we’re screwed.
I think one of the real problems I see is that in the US (at least on the eastern seaboard anyway) many intellectual people are not humble in the least; and that would turn anyone off.
Actually, I think it’s a bit worse, many people who you meet IRL who have advanced degrees hold all sorts of stupid views themselves; so the less intellectual person does indeed have reason to want to knock such a person down a peg. Most of my family has advanced degrees; but they really are low information types of people with lots of biases - they are factually wrong about things as often as they are right. And as far as common sense goes, and I don’t mean the type of common sense that people talk about to make themselves feel better about being stupid academically, I mean just the kind of common sense that keeps you from getting ripped off on a monthly basis by some salesman . … don’t get me started.
Stupidity and levels of Dumb Ass seem to match the number of people who drive with baseball caps side ways and with an unlit cigarette in their mouth, especially as they drive.
It’s like they are PROUD of their ignorance & need to flaunt it.
I guess it’s their way of saying, “…so what if I get cancer? Fuck You! Now go pay for my treatment!”
Honestly, some people (ie Those people) serve the world better as FERTILIZER.
I think the issue is that there is no dialogue, no effort to move towards the right answer. It is not that ideas such as evolution and climate change are being challenged by evidence; they are being shouted down by those who have no interest in evidence or facts. “The Bible said it, so it must be true and no evidence you present will ever make me even reconsider my position” (evolution), or “climate change is a liberal commie hoax so all of the evidence supporting it is obviously a liberal commie lie and I don’t even have to look at the so-called evidence to know it is a liberal commie plot,” etc.
yeah, this.
No one thinks it is 4,000 years old - some say it is about 6,000 years old:
They also believe fossils came from a world-wide flood about 4,500 years ago:
This is what some young-earth creationists say about dinosaurs:
Note that a lot of these anti-science beliefs are pushed by industries that could not withstand actual scientific scrutiny.
For example, climate change has a whole bunch of industries opposed to the science of this: oil & gas companies, automobile companies, road construction companies, electric power plant companies, etc. So they all funnel money to think tanks that push the work of the tiny percentage of anti-climate change scientists, publicity campaigns to try to convince the general public that this is still a scientific controversy, PR companies to produce fake ‘movements’ of individual citizens, textbook companies to produce biased materials for schoolchildren, etc.
So it isn’t just that people are anti-intellectual or anti-science (though that’s often true, also) – there are corporations with a vested interest in pushing these anti- views. (And it’s not just in America – look at some of the German & British pharmaceutical companies activities. Wasn’t Andrew Wakefield’s anti-vaccine work originally funded by companies that make money off of people who get sick from those preventible diseases?)
So when you see this anti-science stuff, look to see who is or will make money if this view wins.
Follow the money!
It seems more and more that anyone who presents ANY comment on an issue is allowed to be shouted down. That is indicative of a decline in basic conversational manners. My friend points to the old Trident gum commercials in which the catch phrase was “Chew on this” and he thought that was the beginning of the rude-is-fun (at least for me) trend. It was certainly epitomized by the senator barking out “YOU LIE” during the President’s presentation on Healthcare reforms and it’s disgustingly commonplace now.
I think the problem is really the other side of the coin of our specialized society. Specialization has allowed humans to move from hunter-gatherer tribal encampments to sprawling megalopoli to pre-planned communities with thematic architecture and street designs. Amazingly-skilled architects concentrate on designing cool houses with awesome gadgets invented by clever engineers who were able to concentrate on their application of astounding scientific breakthroughs achieved by brilliant scientists who were supported by excellent cooks and housekeepers and…
But specialization also means that Capt Kirk can come in and say, “Grestarian, you’re a real idiot when it comes to winding microphone cables!” I can also reply, “Sure, but you know nothing about (Political Economy of) World Systems theory.”
And we’re both right.
But we add to this the matter of what social psychologists call Transferred States. This is the phenomenon by which people regularly assume that a person who has proven excellence in one area is also excellent in another area. This is how Martin Luther King, a Baptist preacher, found himself leading the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s and how M. Gandhi, a British-trained lawyer, found himself leading the Swaraj (‘Get the Brits out’) movement in India. Unfortunately, the other side of that coin is that we have Dr. Whats-his-name, a dentist, becoming one of the most vocal and respected (by their side) experts calling Global Warming a hoax and we had Ronald Reagan, an actor (hmmm something about trained orators…) becoming California Governor, US President, and poster boy for the 1980’s backlash against the peace/love/sex/drugs/rock-n-roll/explore-other-religions social movements of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
Adding together the culture of rudeness and the transferred states phenomenon, there has developed a culture in the USA in which people emphasize the inexpertise of a person in order to undermine his argument. [This is considered a logical fallacy in debates.] Your fame and fortune come from playing guitar in a lucrative band, how could you possibly understand the vastly different field of planetary physics and global warming?
I tend to think there’s a considerable overlap in such attitudes as you define them. But then I think “Intellectual” just means “highly educated in many areas” and that can include science as well as the arts and humanities. While I certainly wouldn’t encourage reifying scientists as the new priests-of-the-modern-cult-of-science, I am thoroughly appalled that there are people who really find no value in systematic education, pedagogical standards, or even professional teachers.
China’s communist revolution peaked with the anti-intellectual cultural revolution. Similar foolishness (Khmer Rouge, Holocaust, pogroms, etc.) has been noted in previous responses. Unfortunately it’s not unique to the USA or this era.
As advances in medicine, engineering, psychology, et cetera make positive differences in a society, that society appreciates the value of education. As those who turn research advances into commercial successes gain power, they lose (or abandon, see below) appreciation for the value of education and see it as a threat to their hegemony. [Cite? No, I’m generalizing – why, does my bias show through?]
There’s no small coincidence that Reagan moved into the White House at the same time neo-fundamentalist Christianity became widespread and powerful. His views against new-age and other non-Christian religions rang well with them and they helped each other dominate the nation.
The Gipper relished his role and capitalized on his I’m-just-an-average-guy-like-y’all image because, after all, that’s been one of the Republican party’s strategies* for attracting constituents for, well, just about forever. And since it worked for Ronny, then it really worked for George W# and it seems like the latest batches of candidates have tried to triple-down on that theme…
I, for one, think the job of making critical decisions for the entire nation requires a level of intelligence that is way above average – for understanding the multi-disciplinary science of environmental change, for comprehending macro- and micro-economics, history, biology, physics, literature, psychology, sociology, geography, geology, anthropology, law, and computer technology. That’s a lot to expect of a leader and I don’t think the I’m-just-an-average-small-business-owner mindset can’t rise to that challenge.
I think the world has experienced cycles of pro- and anti- science/education/progress social movements. The collapse of the Roman empire didn’t completely stifle engineering and science (as many would overdramatize) but the dominance of the Church and its strict control of knowledge certainly slowed things down until the Renaissance and Enlightenment surges saw more educated masses and more rapid changes. And while some regions went through down-cycles, others went through up-cycles. Naval dominance went from Portugal to Holland to England; scientific dominance moved from Italy to France to Holland to Germany – and these changes came about through educational and theoretical advances and applications thereof.
Conservative ideologies (regardless of party name) are fundamentally “Don’t change things; we like it the way it is – conserve the status quo.” But change is fostered by education and the interplay of ideas (many of them with diverse cultural roots), so conservative ideologies tend to oppose education and intellectuals (especially well-educated people). Thus, as conservative political views become more widespread and dominant, so does the anti-education sentiment.
—G!
*My college history professor put it this way: The Democratic Party said, “We stand for peace and religious freedom and diversity and education.” and the Whigs replied, “Okay, then we stand for the opposite…uhh…like strong militaries and Christianity and…well, making sure the people fit to lead are leading…oh, and being just like everyone else, not so smart that nobody can understand ya.” And eventually the Whig party crumbled and the Republican party rose from its ashes on mostly the same values.
#Though nobody believed former President George HW Bush was an idiot because, after all, he was head of an Intelligence agency. The star idiot role fell to his VP…
I think the U.S. is anti-intellectual to a greater extent than other countries, and I think an excellent example is the way “elite” and “elitist” are used as pejoratives.
Why would a politician be criticized for having gone to an Ivy League school? Do the French or Brits criticize their leaders for having degrees from the Sorbonne or Cambridge?
If the Pres sets up a Brain Trust of the top 10 economists in the world to advise him, does he get criticized for following their advice? I think he does, I think it’s anti-intellectual, and I think that sort of thing is common in the U.S.
The disturbing part is that a number of the bottom 50% have been elected to high office and make policy, chair science committees in the house, or spew regularly on loon radio.
Of course its a general trend in both the West and the globe and its been something that’s always been with us, although its probably been exacerbated in recent decades by the rise of postmodernist thinking and the prominence of Oriental mysticism in Western life. Its just that in other places it comes in the form of say opposition to nuclear power or GMOs rather than young earth creationism or climate change denial. Also interesting how you put abstinence sex education with the rest-abstinence is certainly vastly superior and more reliable compared to any other method of birth control in terms of preventing STD infection or pregnancy, not to mention the various other harmful effects than come from casual fornication. This obviously does not mean I endorse abstinence-only education since birth-control does seem to be effective but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have abstinence-preferred education. Also keep in mind that unlike the rest, anti-vaccination sentiment is just as much the product of the cultural left as the right-previous to California’s recent reforms in this regard only Mississippi and West Virginia did not have religious/philosophical exemptions to vaccination for children enrolled in public schools and it is the white liberal bulwarks of Westside Los Angeles or San Francisco that has some of lowest rates of vaccinated children in schools.
One might have a point if this was limited to the pre-1880 period before the thorough importation of European cultural practices into American society but otherwise its quite silly considering by the early 20th Century America was already at the forefront of technological advance. Even before the Gilded Age, America had a long tradition of public school education and New England probably had the world’s highest literacy rate from the 17th Century onwards. The lack of intellectual activity can be attributed as much to simply a lack of people in the United States that would allow for large-scale intellectual culture to flourish.
I actually don’t think this is entirely inaccurate-in some ways the immediate postwar period combined a reasonable spirit of optimism with trust in legitimate institutions and liberal/social-democratic politics. However, even then of course there was plenty of anti-intellectualism on all fronts (arguably even more-nowadays Noam Chomsky is an intellectual celebrity but during the Cold War he’d have been lucky to not lose his tenure). Finally, of course, the undermining of the Postwar cultural consensus can be attributed just as much to the rise of the New Left and Oriental mysticism among the urban cultural elites as the growth of the Religious Right.
“Back in my day…”
“Elitist” is a pejorative used in virtually all countries and in many cases quite legitimately.
Actually yes-you will hear right-wing National Fronters in France denouncing Europhile technocrats of the two mainstream parties who went to the Sciences Po while left-wing members of the Labour Party will attack the Cameron government as being full of elite Eton and other public school graduates.
So how do you determine this list of “top 10 economists”? What if they violently disagree with each other on matters such as deficit spending or monetary policy? And regardless of what economic policy is adopted, there always is going to be criticism from someone, somewhere.
I won’t be responding to all of your points since I either agree with them and/or there is not much to debate there.
I’m not sure if Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi are the best examples in this area. It isn’t much of a stretch for a minister to become the leader of a moral movement much less a lawyer leading a political movement.
The former two seem to be more of a trait of the cultural left than of the right.
What is this supposed to mean (especially the digression)? Why does commercial success lead to the loss/abandonment of the appreciation for the value of education? If anything its been the reverse-commercial success leads to increased education levels; hence the great numbers of children of Jewish or Asian middlemen who end up going to Ivy Leagues to join the professions.
The regrettable thing, of course, is that the progressives forces in this country have done little to counter the faux-populism of the right with genuine majoritarian populism, even if there are tentative signs that Bernie Sanders may be starting a new era of mass leftism in this Republic.
I think virtually all people who have been President have had above average intelligence (except probably Harding)-in general one does not get to such a position without a certain level of cleverness and skill. The President, however, does not need to be some sort of a genius polymath nor does he have to be even a policy wonk-the critical thing is that he has to have the intelligence, skills, and guts for the down and dirty work of getting legislation passed and have broadly the right ideological views to appoint the right experts to guide him in the various areas of policy. Harry Truman who never graduated college was a far President than Stanford-educated Herbert Hoover for example. Certainly, I’d rather have a good union man at the helm rather than a Niall Ferguson or a Milton Friedman.
Incidentally this a very good article that warns against the dangers of such thinking: http://www.salon.com/2015/04/13/the_medias_dangerous_policy_wonk_fetish_why_america_doesnt_need_a_president_with_bold_new_ideas/
Is this necessarily the case? There have been anti-intellectual variants of conservatism certainly, but other variants of conservatism (such as that espoused by the late William F. Buckley Jr.) was very much intellectual, seeing themselves as defenders of the great Western tradition against the Bolsheviks without and the hippies within. And there have been plenty of periods where intellectuals were undoubtedly more right-wing than the average person: in Wilhelmine Germany for example, there was virtually no intelligentsia component to the Social Democratic Party while bourgeois intellectuals and students supported the (classical) liberal parties. Similarly during the rise of the Third Reich, gentile college graduates undoubtedly were more likely to be Nazi than average considering that by the early 1930s the only strong opposition parties were the working-class Social Democratic and Communist parties and the rural Catholic Centre Party. Indeed, since higher levels of education tends to be correlated with higher incomes which in turn tends to be correlated with political conservatism, the general pattern throughout the modern West has been that those with higher levels of education were more likely to vote for conservative parties. This trend, admittedly is stronger in Europe than in America and has been diluted by the rise of right-wing populism and elitization and bourgeoification of the parties of the left, but is still discernible if one checks exit polls and election results.
I hope this does not intrude upon your privacy, but I’d like to ask who the hell your history professor was. Throughout the antebellum period it was the Democratic Party which was strongly pro-war and expansionist while the Whigs tended to oppose it (although undoubtedly sectional factors played as large if not a larger role). Not to mention that the Republican Party started out as an antislavery party in 1854.
Of course, there is the remote possibility — although no true liberal will ever consider it, nor understand the concept — that some few of those racist, right-wing, gun-nut, climate-change denier red-necks might find it annoying to be continually told they are bad, stupid, stupid children.
What worked for puritan teachers to produce obedient neurotic overly-religious wretches from the 17th to 20th centuries may not be universally applicable.
I consider myself a liberal and I completely agree with you.
On the other hand, Puritan educational methods helped create an educated and disciplined American nation that became a Great Power. Perhaps a bit of real Puritanism (not the moralistic secular Unitarianism of the Prohibitionists or the current cultural left) is needed in this country.
Considering many intellectual beliefs of the past few centuries have turned out to be bunkum I welcome a degree of anti-intellectualism. I think suspicion of intellectuals is too often conflated(sometimes dishonestly) with complete anti-intellectualism. It is admittedly often a fine line between a healthy distrust of intellectuals and being anti-intellectual.
Well, there was also Mrs. Sherwood’s famous History of the Fairchild Family, where the kiddies were taken for an outing to discover the consequences of naughtiness…
…the face of the corpse was so shocking that the children could not look on it.
*"Papa, Papa, who is that? " cried the children. *
**“That is a gibbet,” said Mr. Fairchild, " and the man who hangs upon it is a murderer: one who first hated and afterwards killed his brother! When people are found guilty of stealing or murder, they are hanged upon a gallows, and taken down as soon as they are dead; but in some particular cases, when a man has committed a murder, he is hanged in iron chains upon a gibbet till his body falls to pieces, that all who pass by may take warning by the example." **
*Whilst Mr. Fairchild was speaking, the wind blew strong, and shook the body upon the gibbet, rattling the chains by which it hung. “O let us go, Papa,” said the children, pulling Mr. Fairchild’s coat. *
“Not yet,” said Mr. Fairchild; " I must tell you the history of that wretched man before we go from this place."
How many countries have you been in?
Do a lot of Americans believe in FEMA extermination camps, or is it a tiny handful of crackpots on the Internet?