One of the most aggravating things to me in this world has to be the absolutely rampant anti-intellectualism that dominates so many conversations and debates, and its influence just seems to be expanding. Do you think there will ever actually be a time when this ends? I'd hope so once people become more educated and cultural changes eventually happen, but as of now it honestly infuriates me like few things ever have.
Anti-intellectualism comes alongside alienation from others. It has to. Being an intellectual is essentially saying “I trust the findings of academics and will adopt their consensus.” Nobody can learn about the whole span of the world, it’s too much information. But when you are convinced that collaboration is weakness and compromise is failure, you have to keep the world in your head, and the only way to do that is to maintain a really simplified internal diorama from which your “truth” is derived.
Thanks, I’m already thinking of ways I am off the mark though, like how things like race science and eugenics have been the “academic” position in the past.
I think properly working the academic consensus into your mind involves also understanding that it’s the product of people. It’s not that different from having some trust in institutions outside of academia too. There were people in the sciences fighting bitterly against those trends, and in the long run their position became standard.
Thanks, I’m already thinking of ways I am off the mark though, like how things like race science and eugenics have been the “academic” position in the past.
That was very useful to people. It’s not like a majority, even those disliking academia, will trust no scientific study or something, they just don’t trust the ones they disagree with politically
I don’t think there was ever really race science, I could be wrong here but to my knowledge it was basically all pseudo science. Maybe this is a flawed take but I don’t remember any creditable research from it but lots of old white dudes telling everyone how they’re better because they say so.
Being an intellectual is essentially saying “I trust…
That doesn’t make sense. Intellect is a personal attribute that can’t be outsourced, not even to academics. If someone claims to be an intellectual but the information from academics isn’t subject to the same level of scrutiny as all other sources, their claim is incorrect. People tend to start from academic sources because they have a better chance of already being held to scrutiny than other sources, but if they stop there just because smart-guy-said-so, they’re no intellectual. Or they’re just pressed for time.
I get what you are saying, but I don’t think anti-intellectualism refers to people being against people who happen to have “intellect.” And also, this claim about being a true intellectual seems like an impossible standard. It’s possible to rigorously scrutinize an assumption drawn from smart types, sure, but nobody has the time to do that for everything that makes up their understanding of reality.
I could tell you right now that sidewinder rattlesnakes don’t use their heat-sensitive facial pits to select thermally ideal ambush sites, they just use their eyes to pick a site that looks good. You could not deduce this without experimentation. (I was part of a study that tested it.)
Now, you could trust that I’m telling you the closest thing to the truth that is known in the world of rattlesnakes, but let’s say you want to be intellectual by your definition and go know it without just taking my (admittedly qualified) word for it. You could go get a herpetology degree, go convince a grad student that it would be worth challenging our conclusion, and spend another three months like we did out in the desert catching snakes and running experiments with thermal cameras.
You probably don’t want to do that, because you probably don’t have the highly specific interest in snakes that we had, and so it would feel like a waste of your time. In the end, I think you’ll probably admit that I know more about this snake topic than you, you’ll accept my conclusion, and go around understanding it without having personally studied or observed it, and that’s a good thing because it will free you up to go figure something out that fits into your interests and you can share your findings with me in turn.
Being an intellectual is essentially saying “I trust the findings of academics and will adopt their consensus.”
It’s the exact opposite of that. An intellectual is someone with a lot of curiosity and typically rejects the status quo. Anti-intellectualism is the acceptance of what others say based on “stuff” (emotions, group affiliation). Intellectuals have been oppressed because they offer intelligent ideas to challenge a political party, religion, or the “adopted consensus”.
I just responded to a pretty similar position below.
It is silly to conflate opposition to the status quo with intellectualism. Those visionaries whose ideas led to paradigm shifts were still building upon previous consensus. Sometimes being correct puts you at odds with the group, but so does being COMPLETELY WRONG.
Sometimes
Anti-intellectualism is a strategy employed by some rich people that control some mass media outlets to keep people away from being class conscious.
“the world” is not anti-intellectual, you just hang out with the wrong people
Some folks can’t much help who they hang out with. Any American is literally surrounded by thousands of miles of other Americans, and anti-intellectualism is rampant in the country. It’s not like Sweden is going to let Americans immigrate with the justification that “I’m a sad intellectual surrounded by boorish peasants.”
Others have said it already, but anti-intellectualism at its core is alienation. It’s a lack of trust in academic or professional authorities and substituting that trust for either ones own experiences or complete hallucinations. People will find alternative communities to trust, especially if they can find something that verifies their existing biases.
If you sense something’s wrong with the world, but lack an ability to pinpoint it, you’ll go to whoever seems most immediately relatable to you. Reactionaries like Qanon people ended up in that situation. They no longer trust authorities on information outside of cranks on Facebook.
So the question is how do you get more people to adopt a consensus of reality that’s based on expertise, professional research, investigation, etc? You have to convince more people they’re part of that process and that experts share their interests. America has had that before, but usually in times of conflict against a foreign enemy. The average American used to be really into space travel tech for instance.
There was also a period around the 1890s where the average American was really into electricity as a hobby, like making little circuits or trinkets. It was considered pretty normal back then to have an understanding of how simple circuits like a doorbell worked.
It’s a lack of trust in academic or professional authorities and substituting that trust for either ones own experiences or complete hallucinations.
Often, it’s trust in cult of personality figures that are saying what the alienated person already wants to believe.
The anglosphere is anti-intellectual and some other parts are, but that does not mean the whole world is, and the influence of the anglosphere is waning fast.
