How Anti-Intellectualism Is Destroying America
sweetpotato
Posts: 1,278
You can be smart, but not TOO smart, there, buddy. Not in these United States!
How Anti-Intellectualism Is Destroying America (excerpts)
By Terrence McNally, AlterNet
Posted on August 15, 2008
read the whole article & interview at http://www.alternet.org/story/95109/
"It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant." Barack Obama finally said it.
Though a successful political and electoral strategy, the Right's stand against intelligence has steered them far off course, leaving them -- and us -- unable to deal successfully with the complex and dynamic circumstances we face as a nation and a society.
American 15-year-olds rank 24th out of 29 countries in math literacy, and their parents are as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution; roughly 30 to 40 percent believe in each. Their president believes "the jury is still out" on evolution.
Steve Colbert interviewed Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland on "The Colbert Report." Westmoreland co-sponsored a bill that would require the display of the Ten Commandments in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, but, when asked, couldn't actually list the commandments.
This stuff would be funny if it weren't so dangerous.
In the 2004 election, nearly 70 percent of Bush supporters believed the United States had "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with al Qaeda; a third believed weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq; and more than a third that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion, according to the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. The political right and allied culture warriors actively ignore evidence and encourage misinformation. To motivate their followers, they label intelligent and informed as "elite," implying that ignorance is somehow both valuable and under attack. Susan Jacoby confronts our "know-nothingism" -- current and historical -- in her new book, The Age of American Unreason.
A former reporter for the Washington Post and program director of the Center for Inquiry-New York City, Jacoby is the author of five books, including Wild Justice, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. Her political blog, The Secularist's Corner, is on the Web site of the Washington Post.
TM: Misinformation may well have been the deciding factor in a close election in 2004. I worry not just about the lack of information and knowledge, but also the active disparagement of those who would even care about such things.
SJ: Contempt for fact is very important.
I'll give you a great example that's already obsolete. At the end of the primaries, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain endorsed a gas tax holiday for Americans this summer. Every economist, both liberal and conservative, said this would do nothing to help matters. And when Hillary Clinton was asked by the late Tim Russert, "Can you produce one economist to support the gas tax holiday?" she said, "Oh that's elite thinking."
Now to say that economists have nothing intelligent to say about whether a gas tax will give people economic relief is like saying that you don't ask musicians about music; you don't ask scientists about science. It's not just an attack on a political idea; it's an attack on knowledge itself.
TM: And this from a woman who was in the top of her class at Yale Law School.
SJ: Of course, she doesn't believe it for a minute. It shows that a lot of politicians think they have to play to ignorance and label anything that goes against received opinion as elitism.
I was quite encouraged that the actual majority of Americans -- both Republicans and Democrats -- said the gas tax was just a stupid gimmick.
TM: They were already getting a tax rebate check. At a certain point we see through this.
SJ: Elite simply means "the best," not the political meaning that's been ascribed to it. If you're having an operation, you don't want an ordinary surgeon. You want an elite surgeon. You want the best.
TM: I suspect the connotation is better known now than the actual definition. "Elite" now implies stuffy, superior, arrogant -- and, most importantly, not one of us.
SJ: These basic knowledge deficits -- the fact that American 15-year-olds are near the bottom in mathematical knowledge compared with other countries, for example -- actually affect our ability to understand larger public issues. To understand what it means that the top 1 percent of income earners are getting tax breaks, you have to know what 1 percent means.
TM: Richard Hofstadter's 1963 classic, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, described our anti-intellectualism as "older than our national identity." Yet our founders developed a form of government that demanded an informed citizenry. How do these two things fit together?
SJ: That's really the American paradox. For example, there is no country that has had more faith in education as an instrument of social mobility. No country in the West democratized education earlier, but no country has been more suspicious of too much education. We've always thought of education as good if it gets you a better job, but bad if it makes you think too much.
Hofstadter was writing at the dawn of video culture, so he could not talk about one of the key things in my book. The domination of culture by mass media, video and 24/7 infotainment has been added to the American mix in the last 40 years. Video culture is the worst possible means for understanding anything more complicated than a sound bite.
TM: I recall the book The Sound Bite Society (by Jeffrey Scheuer, 2000) said that television inherently prefers simplistic arguments, simple solutions, simple answers.
SJ: As we're talking, I happen to have my computer on. News stories are flashing and off the screen. If they're on for two seconds, you're going to miss a lot, and that's the problem with video culture as translated through computers.
TM: Having all that information at our fingertips is a plus. What's the negative?
SJ: I love that I don't have to go through half a dozen books to find a date that I've forgotten. The ability to get quick information is great, but if you don't have a framework of knowledge in which to fit that information, it means nothing.
I'll give you an example. In my talks to people, I often mention a statistic from the National Constitution Center that almost half of Americans can't name even one of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. A student stood up at a university in California and said, "That doesn't matter because you can just look it up on the Internet." But if you don't know what the First Amendment is in the first place, you don't know what question to ask the Web.
Garbage in, garbage out. The Web's only as good as our ability to ask questions of it. The ability to access information means nothing if you don't have an educated framework of knowledge to fit it into.
con't...
How Anti-Intellectualism Is Destroying America (excerpts)
By Terrence McNally, AlterNet
Posted on August 15, 2008
read the whole article & interview at http://www.alternet.org/story/95109/
"It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant." Barack Obama finally said it.
Though a successful political and electoral strategy, the Right's stand against intelligence has steered them far off course, leaving them -- and us -- unable to deal successfully with the complex and dynamic circumstances we face as a nation and a society.
American 15-year-olds rank 24th out of 29 countries in math literacy, and their parents are as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution; roughly 30 to 40 percent believe in each. Their president believes "the jury is still out" on evolution.
Steve Colbert interviewed Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland on "The Colbert Report." Westmoreland co-sponsored a bill that would require the display of the Ten Commandments in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, but, when asked, couldn't actually list the commandments.
This stuff would be funny if it weren't so dangerous.
In the 2004 election, nearly 70 percent of Bush supporters believed the United States had "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with al Qaeda; a third believed weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq; and more than a third that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion, according to the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. The political right and allied culture warriors actively ignore evidence and encourage misinformation. To motivate their followers, they label intelligent and informed as "elite," implying that ignorance is somehow both valuable and under attack. Susan Jacoby confronts our "know-nothingism" -- current and historical -- in her new book, The Age of American Unreason.
A former reporter for the Washington Post and program director of the Center for Inquiry-New York City, Jacoby is the author of five books, including Wild Justice, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. Her political blog, The Secularist's Corner, is on the Web site of the Washington Post.
TM: Misinformation may well have been the deciding factor in a close election in 2004. I worry not just about the lack of information and knowledge, but also the active disparagement of those who would even care about such things.
SJ: Contempt for fact is very important.
I'll give you a great example that's already obsolete. At the end of the primaries, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain endorsed a gas tax holiday for Americans this summer. Every economist, both liberal and conservative, said this would do nothing to help matters. And when Hillary Clinton was asked by the late Tim Russert, "Can you produce one economist to support the gas tax holiday?" she said, "Oh that's elite thinking."
Now to say that economists have nothing intelligent to say about whether a gas tax will give people economic relief is like saying that you don't ask musicians about music; you don't ask scientists about science. It's not just an attack on a political idea; it's an attack on knowledge itself.
TM: And this from a woman who was in the top of her class at Yale Law School.
SJ: Of course, she doesn't believe it for a minute. It shows that a lot of politicians think they have to play to ignorance and label anything that goes against received opinion as elitism.
I was quite encouraged that the actual majority of Americans -- both Republicans and Democrats -- said the gas tax was just a stupid gimmick.
TM: They were already getting a tax rebate check. At a certain point we see through this.
SJ: Elite simply means "the best," not the political meaning that's been ascribed to it. If you're having an operation, you don't want an ordinary surgeon. You want an elite surgeon. You want the best.
TM: I suspect the connotation is better known now than the actual definition. "Elite" now implies stuffy, superior, arrogant -- and, most importantly, not one of us.
SJ: These basic knowledge deficits -- the fact that American 15-year-olds are near the bottom in mathematical knowledge compared with other countries, for example -- actually affect our ability to understand larger public issues. To understand what it means that the top 1 percent of income earners are getting tax breaks, you have to know what 1 percent means.
TM: Richard Hofstadter's 1963 classic, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, described our anti-intellectualism as "older than our national identity." Yet our founders developed a form of government that demanded an informed citizenry. How do these two things fit together?
SJ: That's really the American paradox. For example, there is no country that has had more faith in education as an instrument of social mobility. No country in the West democratized education earlier, but no country has been more suspicious of too much education. We've always thought of education as good if it gets you a better job, but bad if it makes you think too much.
Hofstadter was writing at the dawn of video culture, so he could not talk about one of the key things in my book. The domination of culture by mass media, video and 24/7 infotainment has been added to the American mix in the last 40 years. Video culture is the worst possible means for understanding anything more complicated than a sound bite.
TM: I recall the book The Sound Bite Society (by Jeffrey Scheuer, 2000) said that television inherently prefers simplistic arguments, simple solutions, simple answers.
SJ: As we're talking, I happen to have my computer on. News stories are flashing and off the screen. If they're on for two seconds, you're going to miss a lot, and that's the problem with video culture as translated through computers.
TM: Having all that information at our fingertips is a plus. What's the negative?
SJ: I love that I don't have to go through half a dozen books to find a date that I've forgotten. The ability to get quick information is great, but if you don't have a framework of knowledge in which to fit that information, it means nothing.
I'll give you an example. In my talks to people, I often mention a statistic from the National Constitution Center that almost half of Americans can't name even one of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. A student stood up at a university in California and said, "That doesn't matter because you can just look it up on the Internet." But if you don't know what the First Amendment is in the first place, you don't know what question to ask the Web.
Garbage in, garbage out. The Web's only as good as our ability to ask questions of it. The ability to access information means nothing if you don't have an educated framework of knowledge to fit it into.
con't...
"Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, Barack Obama."
"Obama's main opponent in this election on November 4th (was) not John McCain, it (was) ignorance."~Michael Moore
"i'm feeling kinda righteous right now. with my badass motherfuckin' ukulele!"
~ed, 8/7
"Obama's main opponent in this election on November 4th (was) not John McCain, it (was) ignorance."~Michael Moore
"i'm feeling kinda righteous right now. with my badass motherfuckin' ukulele!"
~ed, 8/7
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
SJ: The network of infotainment has no national boundaries, it's all over the world. But there are a couple of things that make America particularly susceptible.
A fundamentalist is one who believes in a literal interpretation of sacred books, and a third of Americans believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. That's about 10 times more than any other developed country in the world. It's entirely possible to be a religious believer and to accept science, but not if you're a literal religious believer. You can't believe that the world was literally created in six days, and be open to modern knowledge.
There's also something else: We've always had more faith in technology than other countries. One of our problems with computers is that we believe in technological solutions to what are essentially non-technological problems. Not knowing is a non-technological problem. The idea that the Web is an answer to knowing nothing is wrong, but it's something that Americans -- with our history of believing in technology as the solution to everything -- are particularly susceptible to.
TM: I'm beginning to feel like the child who keeps asking "Why?" You say that a much larger percentage of Americans believe in the literal word of holy books. In your investigations, have you come up with some sense of why that is?
SJ: That's in my previous book, Freethinkers. One reason, oddly enough, is our absolute separation of church and state. In secular Europe -- as it's often called sneeringly by people like Justice Antonin Scalia -- religious belief and belief in political systems were united. So if you opposed the government, you also had to oppose religion. That wasn't true in America because we had separation of church and state. Many forms of religious belief survived in America, because you could believe anything you wanted and still not be opposed to your government.
TM: So because religion wasn't tied to government we had more freedom ...
SJ: And more religion.
TM: But what is it in our culture? Is our geographical isolation part of it?
SJ: You anticipated what I was going to say. There's also the idea of American exceptionalism -- that America is different from every other country.
I say in my book that Americans are unwilling to look at how really bad our educational system is because we've all been propagandized with the idea that we're number one. That may have been true after World War II, but not anymore. The idea that we're number one and special and better than everybody else is a very powerful factor in American life, and it prevents us from examining certain respects in which we're not number one.
TM: Politicians in particular tend to preface any comment by saying, "Well, of course we have the best education system," "We have the best health care," the best this and that. And people accept that even though we have clear evidence that it is no longer true.
SJ: Evidence involving infant mortality and life expectancy. Though the very rich in this country get the best health care in the world, by all of the normal indices of health, we are worse off than Europe and Canada.
TM: Our universities and particularly our graduate schools are still the envy of the world, but with the education available to everyone, that's no longer so.
SJ: Right, and to call arguments like mine elitist is wrong. I think that the basis of a society is what people with normal levels of education understand. That means we need to be concerned about elementary schools, secondary schools and community colleges -- not what people at Harvard and Yale might be learning.
TM: What are the possible solutions?
SJ: There are solutions at a social level, but they have to begin at an individual level.
After the Wisconsin primary, Barack Obama was asked a question about education, and I was very encouraged when he said, "There's a lot we can do about education, but first of all, in our homes we have to turn off the TV more ..." Not altogether, but turn it off more, put the video games on the shelf more and spend more time talking and reading to our kids.
With my book, more than making a prescription, I wanted to start a conversation about how we spend our time. I'm not one of these people who think that you should raise your kids without ever watching TV. We all have to live in the world of our time. I'm saying people ought to look about how much time we spend on this. There is nothing wrong with a parent coming home and putting a kid in front of a video for an hour so they can have a drink and an intelligent conversation with their partner. It's wrong when the hour turns into two hours or three hours or four hours or five hours, as in too many American homes.
TM: When it becomes just a habit.
SJ: Moderation. I know it's very unfashionable and it seems like a small idea, but I think more than what people watch on video, what matters is how much they watch it.
TM: I believe we're finding that as kids become more addicted to television and other screens, they become less familiar with nature, with their own bodies, with what we would call the real world.
It strikes me that intelligence has been defined by so many as just cognitive intelligence. Is part of the solution that we begin to shift our way of thinking, so that intelligence includes emotional intelligence and other forms of intelligence?
SJ: No. I don't actually recognize these different forms of intelligence. Emotional intelligence depends largely on whether we are brought up to empathize with other people. But it doesn't matter if you're kind to others and you understand them if you don't know anything about your society and history.
These are actually different things, and my point is, one doesn't substitute for the other. They're all important. In terms of society, having emotional intelligence without knowledge is useless. And, of course, having knowledge without emotional intelligence is also useless. But they're not the same thing.
I think spending eight hours a day in front of television -- the amount of time the average American family has a television on in its home -- is probably bad for both emotional intelligence and knowledge. I don't think these things are in opposition, they're both necessary. Neither of them is adequate without the other.
Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7 FM, Los Angeles (streaming at kpfk.org). Visit terrencemcnally.net for podcasts of all interviews and more.
"Obama's main opponent in this election on November 4th (was) not John McCain, it (was) ignorance."~Michael Moore
"i'm feeling kinda righteous right now. with my badass motherfuckin' ukulele!"
~ed, 8/7
He takes what is essentially a partisan free analysis of why America as a whole has lost its brain, and tagged on to the beginning of it a stupid, baseless assertion about Republicans (or "the right" as he calls it) being to blame for the underwhelming intellectual prowess of the American consciousness.
Did he miss the fact that the interview actually STARTS with a DEMOCRATIC example of raving stupidity, or did he just feel that (having just been told that Americans are overwhelmingly politicaly helpless) that he had the option to further extend the duping and hack journalism that passes for political analysis in this country?
Because it seemed pretty fucking ridiculous to me.
But maybe i'm a mental midget?
:rolleyes:
If I opened it now would you not understand?
That is a load of B.S. right there. No one in America has any delusions about how messed up our educational system is.
Bush would never have been able to push his No Child Left Behind program if that wasn't the case.
The problem is that there is a huge wage gap between the upper and lower classes, and both parents in the lower class and middle class often have to work more than full-time in order to feed their families and pay the bills.
This means less time being spent helping their children with their homework or even making sure that it gets done.
To overlook those harsh realities of american society and instead use it as an opportunity to poke fun at american "arrogance" is just sick and utterly disgusting, and makes it clear that he isn't the least bit interested in helping Americans as he is in making fun of them and stoking hatred towards them.
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
Intellectual... means smart.
Elite... means, the best.
...
So... are we supposed to want the worst dumb people in charge? Or just the mediocre, C-Average people trying to figure out our future in the Global Society?
...
Shouldn't we make our decisions based upon sound analysis of verified/valdated factual data... instead of a gut feeling?
...
The people who use that Intellectual/Elitist label as derogatory... whether left or right... appear to be really... really stupid. Only because the probable counter point to their arguements, unless they further explain their position, are... stupid and worse... is better.
Hail, Hail!!!
Take my hand, my child of love
Come step inside my tears
Swim the magic ocean,
I've been crying all these years
Exactly. Because American 15 year olds rank low in math scores, Terrance McNally suddenly feels obligated to label America as a country full of dumbasses.
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=L0yQunhOaU0
According to the Flynn Effect, such a scenario is unlikely.
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
Let's face it. It was the anti-intellectual crowd and folks like yourself who allowed W to squeak into power in 2000. And as an old Steve Wariner song goes, "Some Fools Never Learn" because you did it again four years later.
I don't think Republicans are the cause of the problem. I think they're a symptom.
—Dorothy Parker
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/6902/conspiracytheoriesxt6qt8.jpg
He also loses credibility with those comments about the belief in evolution as a marker for intelligence.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
I don't necessarily believe belief in evolution is a marker for intelligence, but I DO believe that the ability to reason and intellectual curiosity ARE. W and ALL who believe as he does have serious deficiencies in those areas.
It isn't the "I Don't Know" that's killing us. It's the "I Don't WANT To Know."
—Dorothy Parker
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/6902/conspiracytheoriesxt6qt8.jpg
It looks to like the author has a biased agenda and his method for pushing that agenda is to call people who do not agree with it stupid.
It's a catch-22, though. If I just believe an go along with what he says, does it show I'm less intellectual than if I question it and disagree?
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
It's only a Catch-22 for the ignorant. Do you question and disagree because of the evidence, or simply because you don't believe in what he's saying? There is a VERY direct link between belief in creationism and W's failed search for WMD in Iraq. Rather than fitting your beliefs to what the evidence shows to be true, you try to manufacture the evidence to fit your beliefs.
—Dorothy Parker
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/6902/conspiracytheoriesxt6qt8.jpg
I don't see any difference between disagreeing because of the evidence and simply not believing what he's saying. I don't believe because of the evidence.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
Wow.
You think i voted for bush?
:rolleyes:
If I opened it now would you not understand?
And this is why we fail as a nation :(
What evidence is that??? By it's very nature, there can't be any EVIDENCE to support creationism. To be legitimately called SCIENCE, your beliefs need to make a prediction which is testable through either experimentation or by direct observation. Creationism is based of FAITH, and faith alone.
It's no different than in the dark ages, when anything the populace didn't understand was automatically attributed to magic, witchcraft or the work of God. And those who dared to speak fact were called heretics... or WORSE. Hell, it only took the Vatican 400 years to apologize for their treatment of Galileo when he dared to question the notion that the Earth was the center of the universe. Creationists are still stuck in that ancient, ignorant and backwards mindset.
The best argument creationists can come up with to oppose teaching evolution is that it's only a "theory." And they're exactly right. But once again, the creationists show their stupidity in that statement. Because ALL of science is based on theories. You make predictions based on the available evidence. And as the evidence changes, so does the theory. It's the basis for all scientific discovery.
Creationists can't even call their beliefs a "theory." There is nothing to test or observe. NOTHING. And until they can bring that to the discussion table, creationists need to go to the back of the classroom and shut the fuck up. Because their ignorance has NO PLACE in education!
—Dorothy Parker
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/6902/conspiracytheoriesxt6qt8.jpg
You may not have directly voted for Bush, but you elected him just the same. I'm sure that however you voted, you chose the path of blindness.
—Dorothy Parker
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/6902/conspiracytheoriesxt6qt8.jpg
Well then.
From now on i'll run all my votes by you first,
just to make sure i'm on the path of sanity and wisdom.
:rolleyes:
If I opened it now would you not understand?
What he said.
I see this as a huge and growing problem these days and it's really starting to irritate/scare me. (See my thread about the uninformed electorate.) I talk to more and more people who think their opinion is as valid as scientific fact. Unfortunately, this ignorance is fueled when they can find one obscure, obsolete scientific study - even if it has already been proven wrong - and then think they have valid scientific evidence to back them up. It's also fueled by all these interest groups that exist these days and try to pass themselves off as scientists or medical professionals. And, most unfortunately, it's fueled by the media who seem more and more to present the "other side" of an issue, as if that makes their reporting fair, balanced, and objective, thereby giving legitimacy to total BS. And people believe it because they trust the media.
But how to do you reason with someone who disregards scientific evidence as just a difference of opinion? They say, "You just think anyone who disagrees with you is wrong!" Uh, no, but I think the opinions of those who disagree with the preponderance of scientific evidence are far less valid. It's funny how those same people won't let me operate on them because I'm not a doctor. Pfft! What? Isn't my opinion just as valid as theirs? :rolleyes:
And there you go. Intelligence isn't just stating that everyone who disagrees with you is ignorant.
Have scientists PROVEN that evolution is what created the life on this planet? If not, then your faith in them is no different.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
did you even read the godpt quotes you posted? it pretty much answers your question.
You really have no intellectual grasp on how science actually works, do you? Evolution can and HAS been observed in nature countless times. The same cannot be said for the mysterious hand of God. Because, inherently, it can't. Faith is what you have in the absence of evidence to show otherwise. Proof denies faith. And without faith, God is nothing.
—Dorothy Parker
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/6902/conspiracytheoriesxt6qt8.jpg
Huh? Notice that I very carefully said the evolution CREATED life on this planet. I know evolution can be observed and I believe in the process although I do not think there is any proof that is how life began.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
Can we please, once and for all, establish the fact that evolution is NOT a theory on how life was created, but a theory on how the variety of life came to be. It's called Origin of Species, not Origin of Life, because it attempts to explain the diversity of life. Creationists (well, the ones that understand that evolution is not a theory on the origin of life) have a problem with evolution because it is a process that , in their eyes, takes the hand of God out of literally creating the various forms of life we see now, and makes them a product of a scientific process.
No - I don't think they do.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
OK - then I'll ask my question differently: Have scientists proven how life was created on this planet?
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
Proven, no, and I have no problem with people having their own interpretations for how life originally began. If you want to believe that God reached out his finger and touched some primordial ooze and life began that's fine, if you want to believe that free-carbon went through chemical transformations, that's fine. However, saying that we don't know how life began is not a valid criticism of evolution. And if you're willing to accept that evolution is an observable process, it makes it difficult for me to understand how you can hold a fundamental-creationism view, because God created the world, as-is. This interpretation leaves no room for evolution, even though, as you said, it is an observable process