Intellectuals: Mostly Lickspittle Sycophants?

I don't agree with most of that. Possibly all of it. It strikes me that it is written by someone who is trying to present himself as an intellectual which no proper intellectual would ever think of doing.

It doesn't matter a damn what



as being.

As I see it an intellectual is someone who can be detached at certain times. It is impossible to be always detached given the pain/pleasure dichotomy and biological needs.

It helps to have occupations which require no mental effort such as ploughing, an income enough for all forseeable needs, no ties and a familiarity with the works of the principle headbangers such as Henry Miller (at times) or any of a suprisingly short list headed by Rabelais.

Obviously, it is necessary to not mind being thought a bit odd.

I don't think of myself as odd.

What we need to do is to create a new brand of intellectuals.

It appears to me that following the completion of our schooling the normal inclination is to pack up our yearbook and our intellect into a large trunk and store it in the attic. Occasionally one might go up to the attic and reminisce about the old days.

What I propose is that following the end of our school days we begin a gradual process of self-actualizing self-learning.Interested knowledge is knowledge we acquire because there is money in it. Disinterested knowledge is that knowledge we seek because we care about understanding something even though there is no money in it.


The goal of intellectual life is similar to the goal of the artist "the artist chooses the media and the goal of every artist is to become fluent enough with the media to transcend it. At some point you pass from playing the piano to playing music."

Yes of course, self-actualization is the key along with an alignment of the planets and a personal library lined with leather bound books as well as an avoidence of all things experienced in nature.

I'm a lickspittle sycophant without the burden of being an intellectual.

So am I.

Sounds pretty intellectual to me.
Intellectuals are, as I see it: (1) professional thinkers, people who have the social function of using their minds to promote understanding, to inform the public in matters conceptual (teachers, reporters, researchers, etc., and (2) amateur thinkers, people whose "hobby" (Coberst) is to find enjoyment in addressing (identifying and resolving) conceptual problems.
Most of the people in this forum fit into the second category. Some in the first as well.

Spendius,

Well said !


Coberst has a "thing" about objectifying intellectualism as though it is a tangible "state of being" which you can aspire to (in his case later in life).
Here the "new intellectual coberst" is "rhetorically examined" by a hypothetical third party which is really "the same old coberst". This attempted objectification in fact denies coberst the very goal he seeks. He needs to realise that intellectuality is often more about informed scepticism than informed opinion. We have only seen attempts at opinion on this forum. This thread is not in fact an invitation to debate, it is yet another "new self" reinforcement exercise.

I would like to suggest that the reader consider the desirability of developing self-learning as a hobby. One might think of this as a 'second wind'. Like the marathoner developing a new source of energy and excitement at mid-race the self-learner undertakes a second-stage journey in life by creating a new worldview through an aroused curiosity and the development of questions for a deeper understanding of reality.

Quote: "All men, like all nations, are tested twice in the moral realm: first by what they do, then by what they make of what they do. The condition of guilt, a sense of one's own guilt, denotes a kind of second chance. Men are, as if by a kind of grace, given a chance to repay to the living that it is they find themselves owing the dead."
"Coming to Terms with Vietnam," by Peter Marin, Harpers, Dec. 1980.

I've always wondered about "lickspittle." Whose spittle is being licked? Is the licker licking his or her own spittle, or that of someone else? If someone else, from whence is the spittle licked?

So many questions . . .

I lickspittle from all comers.

Allow me (whether or not one wants to, one will have to) to respond more seriously.

Sometimes, "intellectuals" have found a place in society purely because of the vanity of society, or more specifically, those who make decisions in society. The French King François I invaded Italy, and fought the Spanish (i won't explain why France and Spain were fighting over Italy). One of the things he did was to bring Leonardo Da Vinci back to France with him, and to give him a comfortable home and an income in his old age. François did not seem to have expected Leonardo's presence to have yeilded solid dividends for him, although he certainly could have been expected to have profited if it were possible. But his motive--and this can be confirmed by so many of his actions in his reign--was that Leonardo would be an ornament to his realm, and an acretion to his personal glory.

Frederick II of Prussia, rightfully known as Frederick the Great, had long been a correspondent of and a friend to Voltaire. At one point, he brought Voltair to Potsdam, and then lodged him in Berlin, providing a home and an income. Eventually, tiring of Voltaire's duplicity and his amateurish and unhelpful forays into diplomacy (Voltaire entertained a much higher opinion of his diplomatic skills than events seem to warrant was justified), Frederick sent him back to France. But a major aspect of Frederick's reign, and one of the reasons he deserves to be known as Frederick the Great, was his dedication to culture and education. Frederick also genuinely delighted in discourse and argumentation, and the evidence for this is in the correspondence and memoirs of literally hundreds of his contemporaries. But one might ask if such "intellectualism" ever serves a purpose in society.

In the late 17th century in England, the compilation of statistics became an interest for a handful of "intellectuals," some of whom "fed at the public troth" in the universites, and others of whom were gentlemen of independent means who simply were interested in what was then an obscure mathematical pursuit. In the early 18th century, many people in universities and many private individuals began to focus specifically on demographics. Demographics in particular and statistics in general (it is hard to separate them) became a scientific pursuit. That statistics, and specifically demographics, are made into "bad science" through political exploitation does not alter how basic and foundational statistical compilation and review are to "good science." Still, even though government began to take an interest, and members of Parliament used statistics (or alleged statistics) to justify the measures they proposed, it was not seen that there were any useful function for demographics in society.

In the early 19th century, largely due to a continuous commerce with India, septic diseases became all too common in England--typus, typhoid fever and the most dreaded of septic diseases, cholera. During the 1850s, as cholera raged through London in particular, and thousands died, a young doctor in Clapham made a particular study of the incidence and prevelance of cholera in the east end of London. Using medical reports, which were then just beginning to be compiled in a thorough manner, he was able actually to draw lines on a city map which showed that residents in certain areas contracted cholera, and that other residents did not (he ignored the incidence and prevelance of cholera in travelers and vistors to the areas in question). He then investigated "on the ground," and found that people in one area notorious for cholera used a particular well to draw water, but that people who lived "above" them (relative to the flow of drainage to the Thames) who used a different well had almost no cholera. Futher investigation revealed that the lower wells were within the drainage of sewage (both sewage pipes buried underground, and open sewage ditches), but that the people in the area which was almost cholera-free, were using the "upper" wells to draw water, wells which were above the drainage of the sewage system.

He concluded that the cholera was water-borne. We now know that cholera is caused by a water-borne enterotoxin, but in the 1850s, there was no "germ theory" of medicine to explain the phenomenon. (This physician was, by the way, one of the first promoters of the germ theory of medicine, and was in opposition to the prevailing "miasma theory" to explain the spread of cholera.) He prevailed upon the local council to close the "lower" wells, and to require people, whatever the inconvenience for them, to draw water from the "upper" wells. Cholera disappeared in the district almost overnight. (The physician in question was John Snow--you can look him up if you want to, and get a more accurate description of what he did, which might correct any errors i have made.)

Snow himself acknowledged that the cholera pandemic was already declining, but he produced a map of the incidence and prevalence of the cholera outbreaks, and it had a dramatic effect on both medicine and the view society took of demographics. What had been, a little more than a century earlier, a curiosity among "intellectuals," demographic statistics, was shown to have a useful function.

Certainly all philosophers who cannot show that they have any other visible means of support should immediately be taken out and shot. However, there is no good reason to assume that "intellectuals" are simply sycophants, or that there is no practical value to "intellectualism." Even when only ornaments for our society, "intellectuals" fulfill a valuable function of demonstrating the success and culture of society--it can afford to feed what might otherwise be considered useful mouths. The possibility also always exists that "intellectuals" might actually serve a useful function in society.

By the by, before the term scientist gained currency, those engaged in what we would consider science were usually referred to in English as philosopher. The commander of HMS Beagle, an aristocratic and singularly misanthropic petty tyrrant, habitually addressed Charles Darwin as "Philospher." I suspect that there are many people who think Darwin ought to have been taken out and shot.

Setanta

I am suggesting that most of our inellectuals have sold out to government and corporations for silver.

The silver was removed from the coinage gradually--reduced to 40% in 1964, and eliminated altogether in 1969. I suspect that no one gets silver for anything any longer.

What do you expect "intellectuals" to do, starve, in the hope that you will admire them posthumously for their integrity? Do you suggest that government and corporations are axiomatically evil, and that any remuneration from them constitutes tainted money?

Can we have an example?

I spent 30 years working for the state government ( I only did it for the $$$)