Quote:blatham wrote:
You hold as your opinion that "intellectuals are over-rated in Europe". How do you spot them? That is, what characteristics do you suggest ought to be used to define the target of your search?
thomas: I can't define it, and admit it's an "I know it when I see it" thing. Intellectuals tend to be academics as opposed to workers, craftsmen, or professionals. Their training tends to be in the humanities as opposed to the hard sciences. And they tend to write for an audience that values eloquence with language over competence with numbers and facts. It's not a clear-cut thing, but these indicators work reasonably well
Do I detect a preference for which 'camp' you'd like to find yourself in? But fair enough, one has to define the term in some manner and this doesn't display too much evident preference or black/white categorization. Again, to quote Hofstadter...
"One reason anti-intellectualism has not ever been clearly defined is that its very vagueness makes it more serviceable in controvery as an epithet."
If you read some of David Horowitz's writings, you'll find that his categorization of "intellectual" is so broad and so derogatory that he'd think george nearly akin to Derrida. He's probably THE prime modern manifestation of American anti-intellectualism.
Quote:blatham wrote:
Are they over-rated because the society around you grants them too much esteem, or (to use george's main measure) because they over-rate themselves?
thomas: Every group of professionals overestimates its own importance -- that's only human. The difference is that with some groups, public joins in to this overestimation, while it retains its critical faculties. I would say that intellectuals are in the former cateogory, businessmen an example of the latter. I guess this is a similar answer as what George said.
Can we edit that first sentence of yours to read something like "Every group of
humans overestimates its own importance"? This might show itself through demands for a certain level of esteem to be granted themselves or their profession by others, or also, through something quite opposite - the demand that others be reduced in public esteem.
Quote:blatham wrote:
Quote:
A society where power is broadly dispersed depends on well-informed and wise rulers, and much more on the integrity at the grass roots, than in centralized societies such as France or Spain.
I'm not at all willing to grant you this undemonstrated thesis, or the terms in which you phrase it. What, after all, comprises 'wisdom'? And if 'well informed', informed in what manner?
thomas: I left out an important word: What I meant to say is:"A society where power is broadly dispersed does not depend on wise rulers..." The reason I believe this is not so much about power, but about decision-making. If a society makes its collective choices by having 300 million people do their own thing and see what happens, it can solve a lot of things experimentally. To construct the extreme opposite, in a society where all decisions are made by one individual, he has to become a philospher king would have to invest extreme effort into getting all his decisions right. I'm an experimental physicist. I prefer decision making informed by vulgar experimentation and practical experience. If that sounds like Rouseau, I'm flattered. I hear he's an acceptable writer. He has also been on my to-read list forever.
Rousseau had quite romantic (and false) notions regarding human society where unorganized. Reading him in class, I would frequently yell out things like "Merde!" (and I don't even speak french, that's how dismayed I was).
I've learned something about you in this, thomas. You have a clear affinity for the American experiment and perhaps particularly for the aspect of what you term "bottom up" social organization. I see it in your preference for states' rights over strong federalism, for example. It's an entirely justifiable preference and to a great extent, I share it with you and with george. There's a very good set of reasons why I would simply not fit in an hierarchical organization like a school, or a church (hi george) or the military (hi again). But my 'libertarian' streak leads me to defend the aspirations of the intellect, the Ichabod Crane love of ideas in books and in noggins.
And I find it wonderfully amusing that both you and george have joined me here (as you both so commonly do) in a discussion in the sort of question and to the sort of depth which very very few plumbers or car mechanics would give a **** about. They'd leave us in the first two minutes, chortling about how rooty-tooty we are and how we probably take it up the ass.
