Yesterday I received a rather self-pitying book review from a fellow academic that lamented the cultural divide between he as a left-wing intellectual and the majority of people in much of the United States. His quotation is where I would like to begin today:
“Readers of this review deserve an apology from this reviewer for its
personal and rather morose tone. I hereby offer that apology. It is
difficult right now to work in a southern public university, as I do,
in a state with an intellectual environment that leaves one little
room for optimism about the life of the mind. It is not that things
are uniformly bad at the University of Alabama. In fact, we have
fared well during the recent financial crisis in higher education,
receiving regular raises in the past three or so years. At the same
time, colleagues in other states like Georgia, where I used to work,
have received nothing. Yet, the negative intellectual climate that I
see, and feel, is real; and it moderates any positive vibrations I
have because of relatively good salaries and working conditions.
Whether the topic is evolution, abortion, education, public sector
workers, or even public education, the difference between the
consensus of public opinion as represented by our state politicians
and the intellectual values I hold and the intellectual climate in
which I function at the state university is stark. In conversations
with colleagues from other states in the region, I do not get a sense
that the situation is much different anywhere in the region and this
leads to a conclusion that the life of the mind is in an unhealthy
state throughout the South [1].”
The author is right about a few things–for example, readers of his review (and, presumably, the self-pitying book that prompted the author’s melancholy reflection) deserve an apology. This is a matter that strikes me as being of great personal relevance, especially given the fact that I oppose both the decadent values of this particular book reviewer (and others like him) as well as the attitude of anti-intellecutalism that this author decries. As an intellectual myself, and a rather self-aware one, I cannot accept the broad-blanket criticism that the life of the mind is a certain path into moral corruption. However, as a virtuous person who strives (however unsuccessfully) to live a godly life, I cannot accept that an opposition to decadence and moral corruption is itself automatically anti-intellectual.
The author posits a false dilemma between anti-intellectuals and people whose views on social and political issues are in ideological lockstep with him and his fellow travelers of the academic community. To be fair, his adversaries, those who are genuinely anti-intellectual (of which there are many in the South and elsewhere, it ought to be freely admitted), have the exact same false dilemma between the supposedly virtuous people who reject the life of the mind and the morally corrupt dillitantes who represent the face of intellectuals not only today but throughout the whole of human history. As an intellectual, I see both sides and their false dilemma as a personal affront, as I am welcomed in neither camp.
At the current stage, the anti-intellectual movement has not been captured by complete demagogery on the level of a Stalin or a Hitler (both of whom were fairly crude individuals who disdained the life of the mind and sought to wipe out intellectuals in their respective empires). While I must make my hostility to the anti-intellectual mindset very plain (and no doubt anyone who is personally aware of me ought to be highly aware of the high regard I have for education, whether it be formal or the informal education of the voracious and well-read autodictat), it is mainly to the intellectuals of whom I write, because it is they who are courting their own destruction, and I do not wish to be tarred with their brush or to share their likely grim fate if our culture war turns ugly.
Throughout history there have been times where intellectual life became dominated by a particularly immoral and corrupt worldview that sought to dominate large societies. The example of Weimer Republic Germany is instructive. German high cultural life in the period between World War I and World War II was dominated by a similar mentality to that which runs rampant today in the United States (and Western Civilization in general). As most people of the “hipster” class congregate with people of like mind (as people in general are wont to do), they are often unaware of the fact that not only are they a small minority of the larger population but that they are often viewed with great suspicion and contempt by people who view their cultural dominance as a horror and a stain to natural virtue that must be wiped out completely.
Right now the mass of intellectuals, at least from what I can read and hear given my own marginal status in that community, appears to recognize the threat of electoral majorities to their cultural dominance. Rather than seek to understand how elitism and arrogance generally inflame the hostilities of others, and rather than seek opportunities to serve the best interests of others who might be thought of as hostile to their ideology but not hostile to learning and intellectual life as a whole, or even to widen those who are considered acceptable in academic circles to include those who are of morally sound and politically moderate and conservative positions, there is despair and self-pity and finger pointing and blame games. Right now it appears to be popular to blame the common people themselves for their hostility to their left-wing ideology, a strategy that is never particularly successful, and may only succeed in providing a ready base of electoral support for a would-be dictator who can take advantage of hostility to a technocratic elite and turn it into a dominating political position.
It is in the best interests of intellectuals who truly value a rich intellectual life in the South and in the rest of Western civilization to cease the attempt at dominating culture through a narrow elite of highly educated left-wing individuals. The attempt will not succeed–either it will provoke hostile electoral majorities that will succeed in removing the public benefits that this class of intellectuals currently enjoys, or it will provoke a conflict that will lead intellectuals to be overthrown by the bullies of their own side (like Stalin) who are brought in to provide “muscle.” For a small group of people whose ideas are not representative of the population at large and who expect to live an elite lifestyle based on taxes and fees to mock the population at large for not sharing their belief systems is immensely foolish. There will be a reckoning for such folly, whether it is defeat by one’s ideological opponents or by betrayal from within one’s own camp.
Right now we are in a dangerous position before the axe has fallen but where we uneasily feel it hang above our exposed necks. It remains possible for us to avoid our own destruction, but to do so requires humility as well as graciousness and wisdom, all of which are in short supply among our leaders. We seem to be headed in a direction where there will be a conflict (and not merely a war of words) between those who seek to straightjacket populations with continually offensive and immoral behavior as well as reckless and suicidal moral and political folly and those who seek to straightjacket populations into a rigidly conformist and anti-intellectual mindset where patriotism and virtue are subverted into the support of corrupt dictators and their crony capitalist supporters. At this late hour, it appears as if our time to mend our ways and avoid self-destruction is running out like the sands in an hourglass. To avoid our doom will take more than self-pity, but rather it will take collective repentance, so that we do not face collective judgment.
Edge Induced Cohesion 