Monday, July 16, 2007

The Danger of Anti-Intellectualism

The word 'intellectual' has become an almost obscene word in so many circles. When you call a person an intellectual it seems to mean that this is a person who can not be trusted because they have way out ideas.

In Congress, in recent years, complex issues are ridiculed for being complex.

Complex ideas are diminished to black and white, it's one thing or another.

Complex, abstract thinking has been replaced by simple, precise thinking.

Fundamentalism, be it Islamic, Jewish, Christian, or any other group eliminates the idea that there are complex theological positions in play and reduces things down to clear black and white doctrines. The Bible has all the answers and if you don't believe me I'll tell you exactly what they are.

Universities that have taught students not only to tolerate but appreciate ambiguity and condemned and we have many schools that teach students the 'facts' and tolerate no ambiguous thought. It's either this or that.

This whole movement of late has been to condemn intellectualism and ambiguous thinking as, well, evil. And this is dangerous.

First off, the world is a complex place. Anyone who has studied theology, deeply, can tell you that the Bible is filled with nuance. If you take it verse for verse, word for word, you can eliminate the nuance, but when you read long statements sans chapter and verse (as it was written) it becomes much more nuanced, much less precise.

Ethics is ambiguous. No matter how one slices it, ethics is an ambiguous subject when all factors are taken into account. Philosophical ethics is dissed for being too abstract but real life tends to get messy and ethical codes have to have some play in them or they do not work. They never have.

What frightens me are the people who KNOW the answers for sure. They know exactly what God meant when this was written, they know exactly what God has planned for them, and they know exactly how to fix what is broken.

So, for those who know everything exactly, here are some problems our society faces.

Iraq. We invaded a sovereign nation where the citizenry now hates us and there is a civil war going on. (A civil war is defined as people of one nation fighting against each other. No matter how people try to spin this as not a civil war, it's a fact that people in Iraq are fighting each other.) We invaded Iraq. We stay in and the unrest continues and our troops get killed. We withdraw and there is a potential things get worse. What do we do?

Our health care system has some of the best technology in the world, many of the finest doctors and facilities and we are not close to being the best nation at providing health care to our population. How do we solve this?

Social Security looms as the baby boomers retire. More people will be drawing out than putting in and we will face a disaster in the not too distant future. How do we solve this?

Our leaders are more interested in confronting gay marriage and flag burning as major issues and not poverty, health care, social security, or security in general. How do we get the bozos out and put smart people in their place?

Oh wait, that's the problem. We'd need smart people and smart people are often intellectual, and thereby dangerous.

No comments: