the fact that America has been Anti-intellectual has been a factor
in America’s history for almost a 100 years… Adlai Stevenson, when
he ran for president in both 1952 and 1956, one of the “charges”
against him was that he was an “egghead”, an intellectual…
this fear of intellectuals has been the basis of America beliefs,
but one has to ask why? Why this fear of intellectuals?
(just another fear of the conservative… of someone who is smart)
In America the practice, the doing is given higher priority then
thinking… but what the result of this? Practice, the doing must
have some sort of thinking to guide it or it is just aimless work…
One of the attacks against Obama was that he was a university professor
who taught constitutional law… he was engaged with theory, not in the
practice or the doing…
but think about it… the very founding of America was based upon the
intellectual ideas of a period, the Enlightenment period…the Declaration
of Independence is an enlightenment document…It makes use of idea’s
stemming from Locke to Spinoza, Hobbes to Newton…
the very idea that “all men are created equal” is an enlightenment ideal…
that Government is supposed to be government of laws, not of kings or
monarchies is an enlightenment ideal… the very basis of America, is
a theory of what it means to be human, not action, but a theory…
America was founded upon intellectual ideas about what it means
to be human… (thus today, we are floundering about because
we haven’t, yet, come up with a new understanding of what it means
to be human given our new environment of technology and the increasing human
dependence on technology to “interface” with their environment, technology
such as glasses, in my case hearing aid, and soon, hopefully a cochlear implant,
which will allow me to better engage in my environment, which is one
aspect of Transhumanism)
Part of the problem in America today is the overreliance on emotions
and feelings as the “solution” to America’s problems, such as the
the attacks on immigration and the right-wing prejudice against anyone is
isn’t white… we have problems and solutions to those problems can come
from anyone or from anywhere… to deny a person’s solution to a problem
based upon who they are, the color of their skin or their religious or sexual
orientation is doomed to failure because it denies others the possibility of
being right… being right isn’t because of one factor like being white or male,
the truth can come from anyone, regardless of who they are…
(I suspect part of the hatred against Critical race theory is just that,
it is an intellectual attempt to understand systematic race bias
within government, institutions such as the police and fire departments
and within the educational system…as the CRT was developed by
people of color, that gives it a double whammy, an intellectual theory
create by non-whites… which is completely unacceptable to conservatives)
but the real wonder, for me anyway, is why the right is so hateful, so
against intellectualism… there is real hatred in the right of those who
think and work out problems intellectually…
but of the problem with the fact that existence is first thought of,
and then put into action… think of the history of thought,
from Socrates to Plato to Jesus to Mohmmed to Descartes to Newton
to Einstein… Each of these people came up with the intellectual basis
of their systems and then others put into practice their thoughts…
for example, Jesus created the intellectual boundaries of Christianity
and Paul the Apostle otherwise known as Saul of Tarsus created the framework,
the working out of the intellectual basis of Jesus thought… Paul in his
working out of the actual aspects of Christianity, the practice as it were,
substantially change the intellectual underpinning of what Jesus said,
he changed it to make it work in the real world… That the theory and the practice
were different and that difference created issues in the early Christian world…
the opposition of Americans to people who are intellectuals, that has resulted
in idiots like Bush Jr and IQ45 being elected president…think about it,
both Al Gore and Hillary were far smarter then either Bush or IQ45 and they
were both intellectuals… the result of anti-intellectualism in American
politics was the election of two morons who created disasters that we may
not be able to recover from… Bush Jr. created the largest debt in America history
and launched us into two unnecessary and needless wars… IQ45 anti-intellectualism
cost the lives of over 500,000 Americans in covid and created the single worse year
in America history, 2020…
think about it, who is in favor of collage for all, who is in favor of improving schools,
and who is in favor of promoting intellectualism? certainly not conservatives…
they hate anything that smacks of intellectualism…
which has led to the America of today where we have vast problems in
climate change, pollution, economic and social problems that has arisen
because of the anti-intellectualism of the right… for example,
the right has denounced Science and medicine and education…
as being "Un-American’’ and science and medicine and education only
crime has been in its intellectualism, the creation of ideas that can
be used to solve existing problems, like climate change…
realistically the only way we can solve our problems is through
idea’s and thinking…but the right/conservative oppose any thing
resembling idea’s or thought…
and the only losers to the ant-intellectualism will be America itself
Kropotkin