Academia, Intelligence and Power Structures revisited
On Monday the 8th, I ran into a very interesting article over at
Muck and Mystery and I wrote about it under the entry:
Intelligence and Power Structures
Back40
continues on this same thread today with a scathing essay from Mark Baurlein.
Here is back40's setup and lede from today:
Blue Anti-Intellectualism
The earlier post Anti-Intellectualism took exception to the common accusation that those outside elitist institutions were anti-intellectual arguing that they were squicked out by the narrow mindedness of those institutions and so pursued knowledge through other mechanisms, especially ICT (Information and Communications Technologies).
This is a great good thing. As ever more people have access through information and communication technologies to written materials and live commentary by both professional and amateur scholars the increase of the general level of knowledge in the social mind is explosive. It is uneven, and includes as much dross as gold, as we should expect. Every idea is exposed to critique by commenters ranging from the intelligent and informed to delusional ignoramuses. They not only critique the ideas of the anointed, they have the temerity to propose their own theories.
In Liberal Groupthink Is Anti-Intellectual Mark Baurlein hoists those who so glibly accuse others of anti-intellectualism on their own petards. [via Arts & Letters Daily]
Such parochialism and alarm are the outcome of a course of socialization that aligns liberalism with disciplinary standards and collegial mores. Liberal orthodoxy is not just a political outlook; it's a professional one. Rarely is its content discussed. The ordinary evolution of opinion -- expounding your beliefs in conversation, testing them in debate, reading books that confirm or refute them -- is lacking, and what should remain arguable settles into surety. With so many in harmony, and with those who agree joined also in a guild membership, liberal beliefs become academic manners. It's social life in a professional world, and its patterns are worth describing.
The mechanisms and effects of groupthink have been discussed in previous post such as All The Way, Unanimous Fallacies and Situation Normal. The problem isn't just that the insularity and provincialism of monks cocooned in echo chambers is divisive and creates social polarization. More importantly, it is a cause of the crushingly stupid policy proposals developed in such places, in effect dumbing down all of society since they are operationally anti-intellectual whatever their intentions and pretensions.
Back40 then goes on to list several points that Baurlein makes with some commentary. He then closes with a very wonderful three paragraphs:
Leftists and Liberals have become dull and soft socially and intellectually. They are fat, dumb and lazy due to lack of intellectual exercise, not only unaware of contrary ideas but also a bit dim about their own. They have never actually thought about their dogmas and are simply frozen when confronted with the intellectual agility of opponents with well exercised arguments.
This would be fine, the natural and acceptable evolution of aged academics who have settled to the institutional sea floor like sea squirts and become sessile, digesting their brains since they are no longer needed to live an active life in mobile pursuit of intellectual sustenance, but it strikes so early in the academic career that students are not actually educated in those institutions, merely credentialed. Education happens later and elsewhere if at all. Society is diminished by this system and the ideas of liberals are underdeveloped or stigmatized, contributing to the rightward drift of society in recent decades. There are liberal ideas that have worth, that would improve society, but the polarization created by liberal dogmatism has reduced the influence of those ideas on policy. We would be improved by better balance.
The trend to education outside institutions using ICT will continue regardless of what the institutions do. They will continue to decline even if they reform themselves but society would benefit if both things happened, if institutions became less insular and prepared students for a life of continuing education using ICT, well grounded in the full spectrum of human thought rather than just a narrow and decadent slice that reflected the closed society of those institutions. If there is any merit to those ideas, a kernel of worth that can be revealed by intellectually honest investigation, then they don't need to be protected from contrary views like delicate jewels. They should be the tools of inquiry, used often and well.
Heh...
Posted by DaveH at November 11, 2004 8:37 PM