You Otta Be an Intellectual!

No Coberst, you're evading the questions and you know it. I can't reject your answers when you're not answering. I'm simply asking you to show us what being an intellectual looks like in practice, not in theory. That means details and examples. Is that too much to ask for? You might find that I don't disagree with you as much as you think I do.

To put it in the language you profess to speak, I'm asking you to live up to these tenets of Critical Thinking:



This is one of your rare posts where I think there's a chance for genuine dialogue. Let's not waste the opportunity. What are the indications of an intellectually healthy society? What things would you look for to assess whether it has or hasn't been achieved?

Apologies, Coberst. I should have said "uninterested" (as the opposite of passionate). You're right: "disinterested" is a loftier posture. I believe Hegel and/or Kant used the term to characterize artistic appreciation.

Shapless

September Scholar

Introduction

I am a retired engineer with a good bit of formal education and twenty five years of self-learning. I began the self-learning experience while in my mid-forties. I had no goal in mind; I was just following my intellectual curiosity in whatever direction it led me. This hobby, self-learning, has become very important to me. I have bounced around from one hobby to another but have always been enticed back by the excitement I have discovered in this learning process. Carl Sagan is quoted as having written; "Understanding is a kind of ecstasy."

I label myself as a September Scholar because I began the process at mid-life and because my quest is disinterested knowledge.
Disinterested Knowledge

Disinterested knowledge is an intrinsic value. Disinterested knowledge is not a means but an end. It is knowledge I seek because I desire to know it. I mean the term ?'disinterested knowledge' as similar to ?'pure research', as compared to ?'applied research'. Pure research seeks to know truth unconnected to any specific application.

I think of the self-learner of disinterested knowledge as driven by curiosity and imagination to understand. The September Scholar seeks to ?'see' and then to ?'grasp' through intellection directed at understanding the self as well as the world. The knowledge and understanding that is sought by the September Scholar are determined only by personal motivations. It is noteworthy that disinterested knowledge is knowledge I am driven to acquire because it is of dominating interest to me. Because I have such an interest in this disinterested knowledge my adrenaline level rises in anticipation of my voyage of discovery.

We often use the metaphors of ?'seeing' for knowing and ?'grasping' for understanding. I think these metaphors significantly illuminate the difference between these two forms of intellection. We see much but grasp little. It takes great force to impel us to go beyond seeing to the point of grasping. The force driving us is the strong personal involvement we have to the question that guides our quest. I think it is this inclusion of self-fulfillment, as associated with the question, that makes self-learning so important.

The self-learner of disinterested knowledge is engaged in a single-minded search for understanding. The goal, grasping the ?'truth', is generally of insignificant consequence in comparison to the single-minded search. Others must judge the value of the ?'truth' discovered by the autodidactic. I suggest that truth, should it be of any universal value, will evolve in a biological fashion when a significant number of pursuers of disinterested knowledge engage in dialogue.




Experience

We develop as we gain experience?-interact with the world. Self-learning is one way of interacting with the world. Through the process of reading we apprehend the world and in this interaction a dialectic process develops. As I experience, through reading, I attempt to 'make sense' of the world and thus develop ever-richer and more sophisticated concepts. As I conceive this more sophisticated worldview I am also creating a more sophisticated self. The word ?'conception' is an accurate word for the result of this experience. Just as the interaction of the two genders of all creatures result often in new life so does the interaction of reader and author.

There are books available in most community college libraries written by experts especially for the lay reader. I would guess that virtually all matters of interest are copiously and expertly elaborated upon by experts wishing to inform the public about every subject imaginable. Quantum theory and theory of relativity are examples of the most esoteric domains of knowledge accessible to most readers sufficiently motivated to persevere through some difficult study. For twenty-five dollars a year I am a ?'Friend of the Library' at my community college and thus able to borrow any book therein.

The experience the September Scholar seeks is solely determined by his or her own internal ?'voice'. The curiosity and imagination of the learner drive the voice. Our formal education system has left most of us with little appreciation or understanding of our own curiosity and imagination. That characteristic so obvious in children has been subdued and, I suspect, stilled to the point that each one attempting this journey of discovery must make a conscious effort to reinvigorate the ?'inner voice'. We must search to ?'hear' the voice, which is perhaps only a whisper that has become a stranger in our life. But, let me assure you, once freed again that voice will drive the self-learner with the excitement and satisfaction commensurate to any other experience.

I grew up in a Catholic family living in a small town in Oklahoma. My teachers were nuns and I learned how to read often by reading my Baltimore Catechism. The catechism is a small book, fitting easily in the back pocket of a pair of overalls, with a brown paper cover that contains the fundamental doctrine of the Catholic faith. It is in a question and answer format. I can still remember, after more than sixty years, the first page of that book.

Question: Who made you?
Answer: God made me.
Question: Why did God make you?
Answer: God made me to know Him, to love Him and to serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him in the next.

Before I had read the adventures of "Jack and Jill", I had learned the answers to the most profound questions that has troubled humanity for more than twenty-five hundred years. Such was the educational methodology that changed little for the next sixteen years of my formal education. My teachers always told me what was important and what I must ?'know' to be educated. The good student learned early to understand that education was a process of determining what questions the teacher regarded as important and to remember, for the test, the correct answers to those important questions. Since I was not required to provide the questions for the test I never concerned myself with such unimportant trivia as questions. I could always depend upon the teacher to come forward with all the questions.

I seek disinterested knowledge because I wish to understand. The object of understanding is determined by questions guiding my quest. These guiding questions originate as a result of the force inherent in my curiosity and imagination.

The self-learner must develop the ability to create the questions. We have never before given any thought to questions but now, if we wish to take a journey of discover, we must learn the most important aspect of any educational process. We must create questions that will guide our travels. We can no longer depend upon education by coercion to guide us; we have the opportunity to develop education driven by the "ecstasy to understand".
Education

I suspect that most parents attempt to motivate their children to make good grades in school so that their child might go to college and live the American Dream. The college degree is a ticket to the land of dreams (where one produces and consumes more than his or her neighbor). I do not wish to praise or to bury this dream. I think there is great value resulting from this mode of education but it is earned at great sacrifice.

The point I wish to pivot on is the fact that higher education in America has become a commodity. To commodify means: to turn (as an intrinsic value or a work of art) into a commodity (an economic good). I would say that the intrinsic value of education is wisdom. It is wisdom that is sacrificed by our comodified higher education system. Our universities produce individuals capable of developing a great technology but lacking the wisdom to manage the world modified by that technology.

How can a nation recover the intrinsic value of education without undermining the valuable commodity that our higher education has become?

I think that there is much to applaud in our higher educational system. It produces graduates that have proven their ability to significantly guide our society into a cornucopia of material wealth. Perhaps, however, like the Midas touch, this gold has a down side. The down side is a paucity of collective wisdom within the society. I consider wisdom to be a sensitive synthesis of broad knowledge, deep understanding and solid judgement. I suggest that if one individual in a thousand, who has passed the age of forty would become a September Scholar, we could significantly replace the wisdom lost by our comodified higher education.

Knowing and Understanding

For a long time I have been trying to grasp the distinction between knowing and understanding. I think I have recently stumbled upon a new theory that might help me a great deal in my attempt to discover this distinction.

I have recently discovered a contender for paradigm within the cognitive science community. Metaphor theory has in the last thirty years begun to advance important discoveries regarding the nature of the ?'embodied mind'. This theory insists that much of our mental activity is unconscious and driven by the neural networks associated with body sensory and motor control networks. Metaphors are far more important to our knowledge and understanding than previously thought. We live by metaphor.

I have just begun to study metaphor theory and perhaps will change my mind but, as of this moment, I am getting hints that this theory will be very important for me and for cognitive science. It has already helped me to grasp the distinction between knowledge and understanding. I am not sufficiently knowledgeable of this theory to give detail now but, if you are interested, you might do a Google to begin your journey for understanding metaphor theory.

To get an idea of the distinction between knowing and understanding we can examine the metaphors we commonly use for these two concepts. I ?'see' when I know and I ?'grasp' it or I ?'got a handle' on it when I understand. We can see much but we grasp little. We see at a distance but grasp only what is up close. We are much more intimate with what we grasp than with what we see. We might say ?'seeing is believing' but I do not think we are comfortable with saying ?'seeing is understanding'.

My interests tend to lead me toward such philosophical matters but the point is, each person determines what is important to her or him. Each person takes that path that ?'fits' for them. No one knows what that might be but the individual herself and often she will not create the same type of questions tomorrow as today.

I pointed out earlier that the September Scholar was driven by an interest in disinterested knowledge. You might add to that paradox that the September Scholar seeks disinterested knowledge because s/he is engaged in a journey of understanding of both the self and the other.
From Net-worth to Self-worth

In the United States our culture compels us to have a purpose. Our culture defines that purpose to be ?'maximize production and consumption'. As a result all good children feel compelled to become a successful producer and consumer. All good children both consciously and unconsciously organize their life for this journey.

At mid-life many citizens begin to analyze their life and often discover a need to reconstitute their purpose. Some of the advantageous of this self-learning experience is that it is virtually free, undeterred by age, not a zero sum game, surprising, exciting and makes each discovery a new eureka moment. The self-learning experience I am suggesting is similar to any other hobby one might undertake; interest will ebb and flow. In my case this was a hobby that I continually came back to after other hobbies lost appeal.

I suggest for your consideration that if we "Get a life?-Get an intellectual life" we very well might gain substantially in self-worth and, perhaps, community-worth.

As a popular saying goes ?'there is a season for all things'. We might consider that spring and summer are times for gathering knowledge, maximizing production and consumption, and increasing net-worth; while fall and winter are seasons for gathering understanding, creating wisdom and increasing self-worth.

I have been trying to encourage adults, who in general consider education as a matter only for young people, to give this idea of self-learning a try. It seems to be human nature to do a turtle (close the mind) when encountering a new and unorthodox idea. Generally we seem to need for an idea to face us many times before we can consider it seriously. A common method for brushing aside this idea is to think ?'I've been there and done that', i.e. ?' I have read and been a self-learner all my life'.

It is unlikely that you will encounter this unorthodox suggestion ever again. You must act on this occasion or never act. The first thing is to make a change in attitude about just what is the nature of education. Then one must face the world with a critical outlook. A number of attitude changes are required as a first step. All parents, I guess, recognize the problems inherent in attitude adjustment. We just have to focus that knowledge upon our self as the object needing an attitude adjustment rather than our child.

Another often heard response is that "you are preaching to the choir". If you conclude that this is an old familiar tune then I have failed to make clear my suggestion. I recall a story circulating many years ago when the Catholic Church was undergoing substantial changes. Catholics where no longer using Latin in the mass, they were no longer required to abstain from meat on Friday and many other changes. The story goes that one lady was complaining about all these changes and she said, "with all these changes the only thing one will need to do to be a good Catholic is love thy neighbor".

I am not suggesting a stroll in the park on a Sunday afternoon. I am suggesting a ?'Lewis and Clark Expedition'. I am suggesting the intellectual equivalent of crossing the Mississippi and heading West across unexplored intellectual territory with the intellectual equivalent of the Pacific Ocean as a destination.

JL

I awoke this morning with the thought "Disinterested knowledge is the progeny of passion". Without passion disinterested knowledge and, thus, understanding does not exists.

(The portion of that that was directly pertinent to the questions could have been covered in one-third of the space, but at least it was there! Now we might be able to get somewhere.)

In response to my question



you gave many details about what you look for within yourself. My question had more to do with what kind of hard data you would look for to assess whether the society around you is doing something similar--because unless we are mindreaders, hard data are all we have to go on. The most specific thing you offered is that "intellectuals" read more books. A survey of research libraries by the ARL showed that while total circulation of library materials went down .1% between 1991 and 2004, interlibrary loan went up by 7.2%--an indication not that patrons stopped using their closest libraries, but had need of resources that exceeded their closest libraries. A 2002 survey by the ALA noted that the use of public libraries for educational purposes was still higher than their use for recreational purposes. Do you not find this encouraging? Is it still not enough?

You seemed to agree with Asherman and me that the resources for self-learning are more widespread and more available now than at any other point in history, but you expressed doubt that many people were taking advantage of them. The number you gave as the minimum requirement for a new Age of Enlightenment was "one half of one percent of the population." I'm guessing this number was given somewhat facetiously, but it speaks of your belief that no one is really taking the intellectual life seriously. What is the basis of this belief? As I noted, more students are pursuing Ph.D.s in the humanities than in past decades; the number for science & engineering Ph.D.s dipped down in recent years but still represents a net gain of several thousand from the 1990s (according the the Chronicle of Higher Education). How do you reconcile your view with these phenomena?

As JLNobody suggested, the world is a big place and it would be foolish to think you can grasp the "intellectual tenor" of an entire nation. Things vary from city to city. Is it possible that your outlook on the intellectual sophistication is so bleak because of your locale? Most of your pronouncements about the intellectual capabilities of the average American do not match the people I see around me in my city.

More on the status of college education later...

Shapless

Let me ask a few questions.

Why are you asking these questions? What do you think I am doing and why do you think I am doing it? How long have you been reading my threads and how many threads would you guess that you have read?

Broadly speaking, I ask because I think anyone who purports to make social diagnoses is obliged to provide reasons, preferably in the form of data, for why they make the judgments that they do; I also believe that social diagnoses need to get closer to the data, not further away. But in the immediate context of this thread, I ask because I'm trying to understand how you came to these insights about the thoughts and feelings of the American population. I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt that your judgments about the nation's intellectual capacities come from more than just a (pre-)determination to paint as bleak a picture as possible, since it would be a flagrant contradiction of Critical Thinking to begin with the diagnosis and then mold the facts to fit it (what logicians call "confirmation bias"). It is one thing to make claims and judgments about your own life's journey; you do that quite often, sometimes eloquently. But it is quite another to extrapolate this onto "today's men and women."

In short, I am asking of you what any reasonable person would ask of any other reasonable person: to measure your claims against data.

I estimate that I've been reading your threads for about two years. I haven't the slightest idea how many threads I've read total.

To continue where I left off...



What leads you to suspect this? Do you speak from personal experience? Your education may have been like this, but I'd be interested to know why you believe it's endemic to American formal education writ large.



I think it is a mistake to imply that disinterested knowledge will get you to "understanding" faster or more effectively than interested knowledge. Here's a seemingly unrelated but analagous anecdote: shortly after September 11, the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen said the attacks on the World Trade Center were "the greatest works of art" in the history of mankind. This appalling comment was just the latest in his decades-old quest to achieve pure aesthetic disinterestedness. He was speaking for a generation of composers who believed that true Art came from renouncing all engagement with the world; only by holding oneself above such mundane and worldly concerns like politics--in other words, only by transcending that in which we have invested interests--can we see true Art. It's a compelling illustration, I think, that "disinterested understanding" (like anything else) can be abused. I don't think you disagree with this, but it's a part of the story that needs to be told when you're valorizing disinterested knowledge.



Surely you are not claiming to speak for all, or even many. I don't see how this statement could be made of anyone but the speaker of the statement.



This is quite true. Some weeks ago the New York Times ran an article about students who spend their college careers transferring from place to place, trying to find the perfect fit, as if colleges were outfits. There was an unspoken judgment behind the article, and one that I share: that undergraduates (and their parents) often believe they are entitled to a certain kind of college experience because of the money they pay. There is a certain truth to this, colleges costing what they do these days (my undergraduate institution's current tuition is at an all time high, nearing $42,000 per year). But this is symptomatic of the belief that colleges must do what they can to cater to students, including (but not limited to) matters of grades. As the Chronicle of Higher Education put it in a now-famous piece:



of which I am in total agreement. Thus, when you ask



I would say that one way would be (paradoxically) to discourage the pursuit of post-undergraduate degrees. It would make education at both the undergraduate and the graduate level more meaningful (not to mention help the academic job situation right now, especially in the humanities).



This is a point with which I've wrangled with you before, of course. "Culture" doesn't define anything; people do. By placing the blame on abstract concepts rather than people, you are insuring that you will never get to the root of the problem. It's like blaming crime on "evil." Both are palatable enough to be indisputable, evasive enough to be unfalsifiable, and vague enough to be meaningless as courses of action. You are correct when you say



but without a second step you are doing nothing to help. This is why intellectuals get such a bad rap: they are quick to yell at laymen to take that first step, but they are frequently vague about what to do after that.

Shapless says--"but without a second step you are doing nothing to help. This is why intellectuals get such a bad rap: they are quick to yell at laymen to take that first step, but they are frequently vague about what to do after that."

After schooling is completeed a person must begin the process of becoming an independent thinker capable of making good judgments without the aid of a teacher or any other person. This skill can best be learned by studying Critical Thinking.

Critical Thinking combines the knowledge contained in Logic 101 (a fundamental course in logical thinking) with the proper attitude and intellectual character. These skills, knowledge, and attitudes must be studied by the adult, generally because most adults were never taught Critical Thinking in school.

Let's not confuse education with pursuit of an intellectual life. Education is a wonderful thing, the key to social and economic success in the developed world. It opens doors and piques curiosity while teaching usable skills (not least of which is effective written and oral expression). Literacy is a product of education, and is one of the essential tools for later intellectual development, but it isn't in and of itself an indicator of more than minimal intellectual attainment. A person may read thousands of books and in the end be no more "intellectual" than if they had stopped reading after the comic section. An individual can have a great storehouse of facts and knowledge yet be unable to assemble/re-assemble those into novel insights, useful solutions, or innovative thinking. Pursuit of the intellectual life is something that individuals choose for themselves, and schooling is just one means toward that end.

Cultural expectations aren't something that are directed and dictated by an individual, or policy-making group. Culture is a product of the sum of the historical events and trends experienced by a set. It doesn't matter in the least that a ghetto kid might not know anything at all about history, he will still be a part and expression of his culture. American Culture at the beginning of the 21st century has been greatly influenced by WWII, the "Baby Boom", the Cold War "Balance of Terror", the Civil Rights Movement, the electronic revolution, material abundance and both First Officer and Doctor Spock. Americans made individual choices in their pursuit of happiness, and the result in aggregate was 21st century American Culture. How does one change culture and cultural expectations anyway?

As I mentioned a few days ago, the opportunities for those who choose the intellectual life have never been greater in human history. Those who choose to avail themselves of the opportunities is almost certainly greater in raw numbers, and I suspect even the percentage of the total population choosing the intellectual life is greater today than in the past. It is a fair question to ask if our world is really any better for having more "intellectuals" in it. What, after all do intellectuals produce? The movers and shakers of our world aren't the intellectuals, but the technical engineers, lawyers, and, the least intellectual of all god's creatures, the politicians. Intellectuals have to make a living, just like everyone else. The flock to the universities and tenure, but can be found emptying trash cans, driving taxicabs, designing advertising campaigns, herding cattle, selling farm equipment and preaching. There may even be intellectual hit men for all we know. Some folks make a living in the Arts; writing, painting, sculpting, theater, dancing, singing (Snoop Doggy Dog as an intellectual)… ah umm), but none of those really require practitioners to follow a life dedicated to "dis-interested knowledge". The thing is people are seldom renowned for their intellectual interests, or even what little wisdom they might have acquired along the way. Joe Doaks may gain fame and fortune selling junked cars, and no one will ever know that he spoke a dozen languages, had written two plays and a book on metaphor and myth, or that he was an expert on the theology of the Middle Ages. Doaks epitaph won't probably mention that his appreciation of fine art and music was highly developed, and that he loved books more than buying low and selling high.

What is the point of being intellectual? People avoid suffering and seek pleasure as an antidote to disappointment and pain. Being an intellectual will not keep old age, disease, and loss from the door. Intellectuals aren't any happier, or more content than those who are not. They still put their pants on one leg at a time, and are just as often mistaken in their judgments as Ralph Cramden. In the film Sullivan's Travels, the protagonist is an intellectual film maker who becomes a tramp to insure that his next serious film will be properly researched. He meets a beautiful girl, played by Veronica Lake, and is ready to start writing when he is mugged and ends up on the bottom of the socio-economic ladder as a convict in the Deep South. There he learns that what is really needed isn't another Great American Film with a lot of arty touches and sly insider references, but simple laughter.

Asked for his last words before being hung, W.C. Fields quipped, "on the whole, Id rather be in Philadelphia". Let me paraphrase that, "on the whole, Id just as soon be a happy and contented yahoo with no education and limited mental capacity than an intellectual."

Asherman

It is, as you imply, a matter of values.

Our culture is driven primarily by the value of maximizing production and consumption. Money talks and intellectual values walk.

But of course the culture is not a happening of mother nature like the wind and the rain. Culture is a product of the people living it and primarily it is driven by the ideologies promoted by those who wish the culture to reflect their particular values. Intellectual values are not largely held in a culture dominated by the possession of stuff.

Interestingly (though not always surprisingly), many of the 20th century's most prominent non-American intellectuals emigrated to the United States. Some, like the German community that formed in L.A. in the 1930s and 40s, came out of necessity; others, like the British scientific community that came here in the 1950s and 1960s, came out of choice. Many of them were as vociferous as anyone about the decadence of American "commodity culture." Still, that's where they came.



Quite so. This is why I am skeptical of the neat mapping of "disinterested" onto "intellectual" and "interested" onto "non-intellectual."