I seem to recall you also mention BF5 and The Why Store, neither of which i consider exactly golden oldies as of yet. So you exhibited at least some awareness of what is currently/has recently been produced, at least in terms of music.
I think an “educated” person should certainly be aware of what modern culture is producing. You clearly are so aware, in that you are able to pick out Brittney and Eminem as examples. Instead of saying, “Brittney who?”
You need a certain fund of information before you can compare and contrast, and make judgment calls.
IMO, your posts strongly suggest that you have sufficient familiarity with a broad range of what has been produced in the past, what has ben adjudged by many to have withstood the test of time, that you can intelligently evaluate what is produced today. (Sorry if I misjudge you.) Without some such knowledge of the past, you would lack a frame of reference.
Tho you have not read the Odyssey, you know what it is, who it is by, when it was produced, and what it is about. In general terms at least. I believe that is a desirable thing.
And I don’t think anyone suggested you should restrict yourself to “the classics.” No need to construct strawmen.
Apologies, Alphagene. Crossposting error.
And yes, SaintZero, being a Creationist means you are ignorant of modern biology. Creationism hasn’t got a logical leg to stand on.
I said no such thing. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying pop culture–do you even read my posts–but if your field of education and experience is limited, it will make you limited as well. Reminds me of the time I was in a music store and one teen said to another, "I like “Tears in Heaven, has Eric Clapton done anything else?” I almost wept.
Now for a caveat: the nebulous point I can’t define is who picks what is worthy and unworthy of admiration. Here I can only plead that there is a richness and complexity in Shakespeare that is lacking in a sitcom. I feel that there is an undefinable beauty in Pink Floyd or Beethoven that is lacking in rap. No doubt I am wrong in my feelings. Probably I am dead wrong in all that I believe about the superiority of a novel to a comic book. And apparently I have people like John Corrado and Alphagene, intelligent and respected moderators, telling me, “fuck you,” and hating me for my opinions. Sigh. I must be wrong.
goboy, I know nothing of James Joyce other than he is a celebrated author. Now, however, just based on that sentence that you quoted, I am determined to read Finnegan’s Wake. That was a lovely piece of writing.
And it’s goboy, not gobot. What’s with the ad hominem attacks from the mods? I didn’t start it, I haven’t responded, and I think I’ve been polite. Did I do something to deserve it?
The OP title is from “The Marching Morons” by C.M. Kornbluth. It’s a science fiction short story about a future world in which the stupid people have outbred the intelligent, and the average IQ is around 70. “Would you buy that for a quarter” is a buzz phrase from a radio show (the story was written in the early 50s) that the few intelligent people who keep the Earth running have created.
Sorry I didn’t get into this earlier; just discovered this thread, and already it’s degenerated into the Corrado Anti-intellectual League taking defensive, snide potshots at people who dare to think knowledge is a good thing in an attempt to misdirect their own sad attention from their own sad inadequacies, and a defense of the idea that will eventually become this culture’s downfall: the misguided belief in the impracticality of cultural knowledge.
The human mind works in metaphors: it’s metpahors that bridge the intuitive leaps that are the hallmark of the inventive mind. A dearth of art and literature is a dearth of metaphor, and can lead only to intellectual stagnation.
I see someone’s already identified this [see my sig], but you might get a kick out of this thread.
Oh, bullSHIT on a waffle. Have you ever heard of the concept of a “gray area,” goboy? I believe in a Supreme Being who created the heavens and the earth. But I also believe that evolution occurs on a regular basis. I have no problem reconciling these two ideas in my mind. God makes everything possible for life, gives it a little kick-start, and then watches it go. What’s wrong with that?
And for my own edification: You quoted scores for Korean children vs. American children in standardized tests earlier. How large of a gap was indicated by those scores? It seemed to be a factor of about 15 percent overall. Is that good or bad on the type of test you were discussing?
Oy vey! “gobot” was an honest mistake on my part. It’s that insidious pop culture poisoning my brain. And even if it wasn’t a mistake, how would “gobot” be construed as an “ad hominem attack”? Am I implying that you are, in fact, a “robot in disguise”?
And I don’t think anyone in this thread is arguing against intellectualism, lissener. Ugh. This is the second time in an hour the so called “pro-intellectuals” have used straw men to descibe the opposing position. How do you like that, John? You and I are apparently against Intellect and Literacy. I’d also like to add that I’m staunchly against Good, Truth and Beauty.
Why am I not surprised that Alphagene teased out the least consequential bit of my post to respond to? I might not even have written the rest of it: as far as A’s concerned, I just hollered “Anti-intellectuals!” and fled into the night.
In the first place.
In the second place, simply rolling your eyes at the term doesn’t make it go away. The posts in this thread that have taken issue with the OP are demonstrably anti-intellectual in nature. That they’ve been made by intellectuals and in an intellectual manner doesn’t really alter that; just makes it a little more creepy.
I wasn’t posting that to start a fight. Even if I was, you clearly wouldn’t be the object of my spewing. I understand where you’re coming from on this, though. I just think that there are so many things that can be taught, so many things we can learn, that it’s just not possible to learn them all.
Two days ago I absolutely destroyed my 13 year old cousin in Trivial Pursuit. He then asked me “Which college football player rushed for the most yards this season?” I just stared at him blankly. As far as sports questions to ask, that one should be pretty easy, but I couldn’t even come up with a selection of names to narrow it down from.
Yes, everyone will be ignorant of many many things. But to say that any person, or a group, is ignorant of subject X because they like subject Y is insane.
FTR, I don’t, in general like rap music. But I can understand some reasons why others might. At its core is a form of poetry in style and substance that was all but unknown to the world 25 years ago. Yes, many artists of the genre go for the easy rhyme, a cuss word every sentence, and are so unoriginal they have to sample every damn song they produce.
You know what, though? There’s a lot of classical music that is also garbage. There’s a lot of classic literature that’s garbage.
My point, in summing up, is twofold:
Just because someone chooses to study something you consider worthless does not mean that they don’t also study something you consider worthwhile.
Just because someone chooses to study something you consider worthless does not mean that it is, in fact, worthless. At the very least listen to their reasoning for wanting to study it before you criticize them.
I don’t know. Perhaps you’d care to explain that. Do you find that my debating skills are poor? If so, why not come out and say so? Oh, wait. Maybe the sentence that I quoted was inconsequential too. You should label your inconsequential posts. It might make it easier for us to figure out what parts of your posts to take seriously.
Anyway, I do consider your “why am I not surprised” comment to be a backhanded (albeit weak) insult, along with the notion that I am against the concept of Intellect merely because I think it is possible to not know James Joyce and still be considered highly intelligent. Considering I have refrained from insulting anyone in this thread, even those who disagree with me, I’d say it was quite unwarranted.
I think you’ve just sucked all the coherency and legitimacy out of this thread.
It’s all very nice to know about ancient Greeks and slightly less ancient Irishmen, but is knowing the work of James Joyce what makes a person intelligent? It’s lovely to be able to sit around with other smart folk to chortle about you extensive knowledge of dusty old books, but where would this country be without all the “idiots” who don’t spend all their time waxing poetic about some cryptic-ass book that takes forever to understand? Plenty of people are perfectly fulfilled with a C-average high school education. Just because they can’t engage in a discussion about art or literature doesn’t mean they don’t have as much value as those who can. Factories are full of people who don’t give a crap about Picasso, but thanks to blue-collar types, we’ve got everything we need in this country. Shakespeare’s plays were originally written as bawdy entertainment for just these people. Risqué relationships, bloody murders, slapstick characters . . . give the people what they want. Unfortunately, now they want Britney Spears. In hundreds of years from now, she’ll probably be a classic artist because so many people have been moved by her. Well, probably not, but the Beatles have earned that status and I’m willing to bet if this board were around in 1964, there’d be plenty of Beatle bashing, they were a total teeny-bopper band. Literature and music are forms of entertainment, and therefore, are a matter of taste. When you’re 16 and your hormones are raging, Homer (of the non-Simpson type) is probably at the very bottom of the list of things you care about, so I’m assuming that most people who love classic literature revisited it as adults - because they LIKED it, or they felt pressured because they wanted to appear intelligent. Whatever floats your boat, but I think it’s sort of rude to look down your nose at people for not sharing the same taste in entertainment as you.
I don’t see any point in reading “literature” for the sake of having read it. I know the Austen reference because I’ve read (and enjoy) the book. I read it not because anyone made me read it for a class–I was in my 20s when I encountered it–but because I’d heard of it and thought I’d check it out. I do that with “cultural references” I think I’ve missed. Although I’m pretty well read according to the standards of anyone not an English major, I don’t care for everything I read even if it is written by a master. Joyce and Milton bore me, I’m afraid. Homer does, too: the Iliyad, so far as I recall from sophomore English, managed to be both gory and dull. While I like the people around me to have seen some of the same movies and read the same books as I (so my witty apercus don’t slide right by them), if they haven’t or don’t like the books I recommend then it says at least as much about my taste as about theirs.
I made one of the witty apercus in the previous paragraph. Can everyone who’s anxious on the demise of education recognize the line, which is from an internationally recognized author? There’s a lot to read and a lot to hear, and not everyone gets to everything. Some of it is a function of age. I’m old enough and have a long enough memory to recall all sorts of quoteables that people probably liked when they were first said, but have gone by the wayside with time. And some of it’s taste. Not knowing Eric Clapton’s music is a pretty minor offense. My parents–bright folks–wouldn’t recognize Clapton’s music if they tripped over him singing “Layla”.
I have only one quibble with the article that spawned this whole thing: if you’re going to make references to books, movies, or classical mythology, get them right. Since the point of making the reference is to illustrate a point, if you don’t get it right then all the reference shows is that you once read Bullfinch’s Mythology and don’t recall it very well.
WTF?!?! Who here has disagreed with that? Notions of intelligence are not any part of this discussion. You’re suggesting that I’m suggesting that it’s impossible for, say, a Tibetan monk who speaks no English to be an intelligent person! Who here has said anything like that? Joyce (or pick an arbitrary, culturally specific artist) has not been proposed as a prerequisite for intelligence. We’re talking about a wide familiarity with your culture’s culture, not a litmus test including any one particular author. A shallow familiarity with the metaphors and history of one’s culture–not even to speak of other cultures–leaves one with fewer tools to go about the lifelong process of understanding the world (scientific, cultural, etc.) you live in. How can you possibly deny that? How can you deny that a greater knowledge–a deeper and wider knowledge–of the things that your culture as a whole knows, is a good thing? To be as cavalier about the all-too-common lack of such knowledge is to deny the importance of learning from those who have come before you: don’t bother learning what your culture has already learned, you’re intelligent, and you can figure it out for yourself! Who needs the common, accumulated knowledge of one’s culture when one can simply reinvent the wheel? How greater a use of your intelligence, Alphagene et al, to synthesize that common culture, than to spend your whole life recreating in order to have the weakest grasp of the universe you live in.
It’s not just facts and figures that are passed on from one generation to the next: it’s patterns of thought, and metaphors, and ideas: Shakespeare and Ovid are just as important to the continued progress of this civilization as Einstein and Archimedes.
In one sense, I can buy this. In another, it’s an argument for becoming familiar with Britney Spears and Eminem. They are, after all, presently a part of what [American] culture as a whole knows. Maybe that’s what you intended, but if it is, familarity with popular culture isn’t limited to Great Writers and in fact often involves a lot of schlock.
Well, it’s certainly not an argument against familiarity with Britney Spears and Eminem (for the record, I like Eminem). A culture’s artifacts are of course just that: how can you know the culture you live in by ignoring it’s effluvia?
Note I’m not saying you must like Britney Spears–I’m not even saying you must like James Joyce. But I certainly know who she is, and have decided for myself what I like about her and what I don’t like about her.
I read Joyce, Shakespeare, Beckett, Joyce, etc.; I also read Elmore Leonard and Clive Barker, and I’m a particular fan of some comic books. I listen to Bach, Mozart, Schoenberg, and Shostakovich; I also listen to Eminem, Rage AGainst the Machine, Marilyn Manson, Kate Bush, Abba, Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltraine, L7, the Ramones, and Nine Inch Nails. I watch a lot of subtitled black-and-white movies (my all-time favorite film is a 1928 Danish silent film), but I also loved Beavis and Butthead Do America and Mission: Impossible-2, and I never miss an episode of South Park or Strangers with Candy.
I’m not advocating a narrowing of cultural experience, for godsake (neither, if I understand correctly, is goboy), but a widening and deepening. It’s the defensive anti-intellectuals in this thread who are being cavalier about ignoring the accumulated culture of the society you live in.
How can you deny that a greater knowledge–a deeper and wider knowledge–of the things that your culture as a whole knows, is a good thing?
I never denied that. Obviously it would be great to have both depth and breadth of knowledge. But in reality it’s hard to do. We’re only on earth for so long. If I didn’t have to work 40+ hours a week and had the resourses to continue my education I’d love to take some advanced courses in physics, maybe learn more about Egyptian civilizations, explore in detail how various philosophers and theologians have reconciled the Problem of Evil. But I just don’t have the time or the money to do that. Most people don’t. My point is that while a deeper and wider knowledge of all things is a fantastic ideal, it can’t happen in reality. The wider the breadth of knowledge one has, the “less deep” (“shallower” doesn’t sound right) one can delve into each area of knowledge, given a limited amount of time and resources.
Shakespeare and Ovid are just as important to the continued progress of this civilization as Einstein and Archimedes.
Perhaps. But I don’t think it should required of everybody to know these writers in detail. If you are studying literature or mythology, Shakespeare and Ovid should be required. If you are studying to become an accountant or a chemical engineer, knowledge of these authors is window dressing, really. If they’d like to learn more about these authors and have the resources to study them in more detail, then go for it, babe. It will make them richer people and all that. But if Ovid bores you to death, why spend your free time reading him?
By the same token, I don’t demand that the great authors and poets of our time be intricately familiar with various tax deduction regulations, nor would I express disappointment if they fail to know what a “p orbital” is.
How does this relate to the OP? Clearly, I think the more knowledge one has, the better. That’s why I’m on this website to begin with. I think that’s why we all are here, more or less. But I think goboy (I double-checked the spelling this time :D) was a more than a little inaccurate with his suggestion that modern intellectual culture has replaced Milton with Britney Spears.
But I will say that if you are writing a movie review that attempts to show off a knowledge of Greek poetry, you really should get it right.
Well shee-it!! There shur is some high-falootin’ highbrow dissension occurin’ in this here thread.
I’m not a complete idjit, and please correct me iffen I’m mistaken somewhot or anudder, but I can’t for the life of me define what the argument in question is.
Iffen I don’t know what were arguin’ about, how am I supposed to choose a side and know who to tell to fuck off?
Would you care to put some money down to back up your statement? Milton refers to Circe repeatedly in Comus, where she is the mother of Comus and the antithesis of the Lady whom Comus’ courts. Although Circe is not a role played out as are Comus and the Lady, the entire play would collapse with Circe as the shadow. Stating that Circe is not a character from Milton is just plain wrong. Even Milton himself asks “Who knows not Circe?” The OP sarcastically asks if Milton is a “dinosaur” because people do not read anymore, but in the same post shows an alarming lack of knowledge of Milton. The condemnation in the OP of the newspaper fellow for confusing Circe with the Sirens of whom Circe warns is rather ironic in light of this, for it indicates the opening poster’s lack of understanding of the significance of classical mythology to the development of western culture and English literature.
Circe is a figure from Greek mythology, not just a character created by Homer. She is used in Homer’s Odessey, but she also part of Hesiod’s Theogony, “Apollodorus’” Library and Epitome, and Hyginus’ Genealogies. Taken out of context, these pieces of classical mythology are just an assortment of useless factoids. They only becomes important when put in the context of the development of western culture. Circe is used by Eugammon (Telegony) who completes both the Odysseus’ saga and Circe’s story, and again by Virgil (The Aeneid), Ovid (Metamorphoses and *Art of Love[i/]), Horace (Odes), Plutarch (Romulus), Pausanias (Description of Greece), Hyginus (Fabulae), Boethius (The Consolation of Philosophy), Chaucer (The Knight’s Tale), Dante (Inferno)Shakespeare (1 King Henry VI and The Comedy of Errors), Milton (Comus), Dryden (who translated Vigil), Pope (indirect allusion in The Dunciad), Keats (Endymion), Longfellow (who translated Dante), Eliot (Circe), Joyce (Ulysses), and Rushdie (The Satanic Verses), to name just a few.
These works are all part of an ongoing mythology begun as oral traditions millennia ago. None of these works stand in isolation. They all build on one another and a great many other works over the centuries to form a web of allusion and interaction. Ignoring them, or actually disavowing them (“Circe is a character form Homer, not milton.”), greatly diminishes their value, for it ignores the continuity and development of western culture in general, and English literature in particular. When compared to this, the newspaper “troglodyte” made a minor slip.