printExcerpted from “Writing In The Age Of The Idiot,” this week’s WND.COM column:
“The reasons for addressing readers’ responses to last week’s column, “Paleoconservative Hypocrisy” [not my title], lie not in an exaggerated sense of self-importance, but in a sense of urgency. For some particularly jarring retorts (these have become ubiquitous over the years) are emblematic of the triumph of twiddle dumb and twiddle dumber in American culture and politics. And that’s a problem.
Super smart sorts still predominate in the few professional niches in which advanced skill and aptitude are necessary if bridges are to keep from falling, airplanes to remain airborne, and their human cargo pacified with electronic gadgets. Otherwise, an intellectual underclass has risen to dominate America in almost every field of endeavor.
Once upon-a-time simpletons sought self-improvement. No longer; in the Age of the Idiot they are groomed to be oblivious to their shortcomings—and will proceed loudly and aggressively against those who fail to mirror their mindset. … On encountering someone he might learn from, he unfurls an “untamed Id” and an inflated Ego in all their fury.
So it was that Ivan Poulter wrote to inform me that … although he meant no insult, he nevertheless needed to inform me that I ‘also appear as some kind of dumb-ass in [my] exaggerated intelligence.'”
Believe it or not, but one Founding Founders forewarned of the “Idiocracy,” although not quite in those words. More in the column “Writing In The Age Of The Idiot,” which can be read on the weekends on Taki’s too.
Update I (Oct. 9): George Pal’s comment hereunder about the association between democratic mass society and mass stupidity is an important one. I wanted to include this observation, plus a reference from a “dumb-ass with an exaggerated intelligence”—can’t recall if it was Hoppe or Huntington—but I dropped the idea. Too many ideas in one column might have caused a riot.
Update II: Regarding Clay Shirky (whoever he may be, posted by anon): the man belongs to the postmodern tradition—a “tradition” that has managed to almost completely dismantle one of the greatest achievements of Western Civilization: the intellectual discipline. (Hint: this is why you “study” so-called “social sciences” o “cultural studies” in secondary and tertiary schools and not history.)
“Intellectual disciplines were founded in ancient Greece and gained considerable impetus from the work of Aristotle who identified and organized a range of subjects into orderly bodies of learning. … The history of Western knowledge shows the decisive importance of the structuring of disciplines. This structuring allowed the West to benefit from two key innovations: the systematization of research methods, which produced an accretion of consistent findings; and the organization of effective teaching, which permitted a large and accumulating body of knowledge to be transmitted from one generation to the next.” (The Killing of History, Keith Windschuttle, Encounter, pp. 247-250)
The concept of the intellectual discipline is inseparable from Western canon and curriculum.
It’s funny how it’s always the ones with the appalling grammar and social autism that calls one’s intelligence into question.
I wonder if those who criticize Ms. Mercers’ writing read anything but tabloid journalism? I for one look at what is being said, and yes I look up words that are unfamiliar to me. I think that most of, if not all, of the critics that do not criticize based on logic and reason are somewhat stunted in their ability to generate any sort of profound argument.
Keep up your writing Ilana. It is my desire to be smarter and more intelligent. As I recall from my studies, the Rabbis of old have said that learning and studying is a life long pursuit. I wish I could remember where I read that, but I can’t so no attribution on that one. I am constantly learning and seeking truth, no matter where it takes me.
Going to put this in bold letters: KEEP UP WRITING WITH INTELLIGENCE AND CLARITY!
“The neoconservative, paleoconservative and paleolibertarian categories, she argued, were important-to-understand distinctions that advanced clarity”
Had I not stumbled upon this blog and be educated about these terms I would still have been in the dark as whether to clasify my ideology as conservative or liberal. I also appreaciate that whatever your views are (even if I may sometimes differ), it is always principle-based.
Ms. Mercer,
Right on the nail head! You go girl, as we are prone to say today.
Redman
A dumb-ass with exaggerated intelligence? I never thought your intelligence was exaggerated.
Oops! I left a dangling participle in my last comment. Mea culpa.
I’m usually classified as a paleoconservative. As such, I worry much more about the ongoing barbarization of my own country than I do about any foreign conflict. Given freedom, prosperity, and cause for optimism about the future, I might be inclined to support the civilized Israelis against the uncouth Muslims. Having precious little of those things, I’d prefer that we Americans get our own house in order before we go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. If that marks me as a hypocrite or a “dumb-a–,” so be it.
This is what comes of democratization, in the arts, the universities, and the public square, of the hoi polloi, i.e. any reasoned, intelligible, and articulate case may be opposed by any talentless, intellectually limited, and self-esteeming mobster. This is now the democratic way.
Thanks for including my comments in your article, Ilana.
Reading comprehension, once considered a critical skill for success in America, seems to be missing among the masses (college educated!) these days. Perhaps as a result, some do not wish to take the time to go through well-crafted, well-written articles like yours. (Your fault, of course-NOT.)
Ilana,
For some who read your column and comment, it is like listening to Limbaugh so they can call in and disagree, find fault, get one over on the writer. They don’t intend to agree or to be enlightened in the first place. It’s about winning the round.
I find reading your columns refreshing and enlightening, and not a little humbling or even embarrassing sometimes. But, I don’t advertise my embarrassment, I just try to learn from it. In any case, you make me think and re-evaluate and consider and modify my views. Or maybe just clarify them a little. Sometimes I find that my own thinking is not as precise as it should be. I hate that. And if cornered, I’ll deny it.
The reference below isn’t particularly relevant to your argument per se,
except that it is a nice piece of writing about the “folly” of
classification in general:
http://shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html
Clay Shirky’s views are ~identical to, but easier to read than Shrager
2003 who, being an overly-intellectual dumbass, wrote “The function of an
object is a specific instantiation of an abstract process mapped onto the
properties of objects as selected by the explanatory context” (i.e. if
you have a nail, every solid object starts to look like a hammer!)
One other comment. I think a lot of the lack of precision in thinking comes about by the influence of faction. What does my party say or think? What is “our” position? And not, what do I think, given my view and understanding of reality? Too many want to just identify with the greens or the blues or whatever team is competing today. Don’t confuse me with the facts. I have been, and on occasion am, guilty of that.
Ms. Mercer – great column! Like you, I strive to learn something every day from those more intellectual than I’ll ever be. You and fellow WND columnist Mychal Massie cause me to get out my dictionary nearly every time I read your columns. Thank you both for your spot-on observations and articulate means of conveying them. As I’m fond of telling my friends, “The more I learn, the more ignorant I realize I truly am!”
Ilana,
You have two major draw backs as a writer in the contemporary setting: 1) You are not a twit and 2) You have excellent english skills in both the spoken and written word.
The fact that you are also rather beautiful is a big turn off too for your female competitiors and metros like Iavan the twisted. The fact that you are thoughtful also puts you with paleo amd libertarian typs who are despised and hated today by the oligarchs who run the show. Other than those minor obstacles, I think you have a really bright future.
Regarding Update II – unlike the ancient Greeks, we have already suffered from our inability to know everything that is known. As such, I would not expect their categorization systems, nor the theory behind them, to stand-up to the strains they are experiencing in an increasingly inter-connected world. Even the longstanding Linnaean classification of organisms is starting to crumble as we learn more details about the genome and its plasticity. We may well need structured THINKING, but structuring KNOWLEDGE is, I fear, impossible, impractical, and destructive.
[Everything you do is built on what they brought forth. “Inter-connected world” sounds like something Oprah would say, to express nothing much at all. An example or two usually helps break down these “theoretical” castles in the sky.]
Judaism lost its Christian believers because Romans and Greeks “Aristotled” their believers, so I’m not very fond of Ancient philosophy. I think I understand where Anonymous is coming from and I think I would tend to agree with his/her conclusion; however, all this is drifting away from the point.
The point being that there is an element prevalent in today’s society that is not capable of ‘rational argument’ and normally resorts to insult as a response. Mr. Hayes made the correct comment in that there are ‘bottom feeders’ as someone on John Stossel’s site called them. Every site I visited today had at least one or two commenter’s who insulted the blog host. I think they get their incentive from television commentators who call tea party protesters, tea baggers and wingnuts.
Television has replaced the school system as the educational medium, not to say that it was much of a step; neither facility teaches anything approaching education, historical or grammatical. Don’t take them personal, they don’t have a future.
Surely any person that calls Ilana an a-hole qualifies as an idiot. As for intellect and ancient Greek philosophers; Socrates stated “True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing”; and Aristotle, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” As to their application at a group or “Age” level, I do not know if they are meaningful.
Good stuff as usual Ilana Mercer.
Ilana: “Super smart sorts still predominate in the few professional niches in which advanced skill and aptitude are necessary” – I WISH IT WERE SO in the Department of Defense. The intellectual battles I sometimes have to fight! Oh, what the hell, it’s Friday afternoon and I get paid as a Federal parasite whether anything makes sense or not.
I enjoyed your Jefferson quote and it can supplement Franklin’s prediction that the Constitution “is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”
Well, at least my daughter got 5 A’s, 1 A- (science), and a B in civics. Ironically, they are teaching about the principles of the Constitution. Yesterday Anna asked me what “limited government” meant! I presume the kids must treat the civics course as pure FICTION in light of the reality of our current Warfare-Welfare Leviathan.
Nevertheless, I see no alternative for thinking creatures but to advocate for the truth even if we go down (defeated by the Neanderthals) swinging!
[Why is Anna asking such questions? I’m worried: the two kids I know (home schooled) know about their Second Amendment Rights and the ostensible meaning of the Constitution: to limit state power. A smart daughter of a libertarian should know this stuff.]
Oh boy! We seem to have replaced mediocrity as our highest value with idiocrity. Is that a word? Never mind. I know what I mean.
I have followed your writings off and on for a decade or so. I think you’re a real treasure and I always enjoy your perspective. As a college drop out who now languishes in an unactualized mid-life wilderness, I feel justified to speak with authority on behalf of the world’s ignoramuses. I know idiots. I work with idiots. Let me tell you, Ms. I, you are _no_ idiot. In fact, while God may have graced me with a modicum of ability to stitch words together, I’ve never found too much I have to say (or am willing to say aloud) surrounding the great issues of our times. Therefore, you are what I would like to be if I ever grew up mentally. (As a fat old man who’s past it physically, I don’t have a chance to catch up to you in the eye candy aspect, sigh.) South Africa’s loss is our great gain in what remains of the USA.
At the risk of being the permanent sourpuss, as I mentioned before, your diagnoses are correct, and will also not be listened to, for the simple reason that a magazine – WND – that complains about dumbing down, while pretending that evolution didn’t happen, is just making a fool of itself. [When did WND complain about dumbing down? I did. Perhaps you equate me with WND. If so, that is incoherent. WND is not a party organ like NRO or HuffingtonPost; it’s a collection of many different, uncensored voices. One of them is mine.]
Given that our civilization wouldn’t exist without the phenomenal legacy of Aristotle, I’d say “case in point”. [Agreed]
Sorry forgot that Aristotle is a saint; I didn’t mean to blasphemy. My reference to Judaism and Christianity was meant in the fact that in Judaism, Jesus was a Rabbi who taught a proactive form of Judaism and died to enact a covenant with God. When Christianity became a Greek/Roman religion, Jesus became a son of God, like Hercules only co-equal with the creator of the Universe and that removed it from its Jewish roots, because Judaism only recognizes one god. The whole Greek “Spirit vs Matter” argument now comes into play and WND is an example. The “The age Of the Idiot,” can also be laid at the door of “The age of Enlightenment” whereas Europe rediscovered Aristotle and Plato and the 15th and 16th century humanists built their foundations for “Socialism” on Greek philosophy. The Civilization we have today is second Century Greek and Roman civilization with advanced technology.
Ilana’s column “Writing in the Age of the Idiot” identifies an ugly, rarely-mentioned characteristic of our time: the Idiot who takes pride in flexing his ignorance. [Great turn of phrase.]
As others have explained, this odd behavior is partly a consequence of the egalitarianism that dominates contemporary Western culture. But the Grand Parade of Morons is also whooped up by another more basic feature of our age: philosophical nihilism.
Nihilism is the (incoherent) idea that no one can know anything about ultimate issues with reasonable certainty. According to this world view, knowledge is actually pretense; free will is fiction; and ideas are arbitrary and optional–the product of one’s culture, or upbringing, or genes.
If ideas are simply cultural preferences or genetic reactions, then classification (known among Post Modern pin heads as “labeling”) is merely an arbitrary barrier to creative thinking–and probably a tool of systemic oppression.
However, if one gives up classifying, one literally loses the ability to think. Thinking is concept formation, whereby the thinker identifies one defining characteristic shared by every entity subsumed by the concept. Knowledge is a logical hierarchy of classification, consisting of simple concrete concepts at its base that build to increasingly complex and abstract concepts. This logically integrated conceptual hierarchy is what enables humans to confidently extend their understanding to the farthest reaches of outer space, and to the tiniest elements of physical reality. [THANK YOU for picking up on this pivotal issue.]
Of course, all this philosophical mumbo jumbo is a source of great annoyance to chest-beating Know-Nothings, because they have to interrupt to resume talking.