Q: Why are intellectuals judgmental and elitist?
A:Because that is the point of disciplined intellectual discovery, to know with certainty that X is right and Y is wrong and to know all the reasons for that to be the case.
We have dozens of ways of thinking about the advantages of disciplined intellectual discovery in Western culture. Here are a few examples:
- “If you had a time machine, would you go back and (kill Hitler, rule over primitives, play the stock market)?” The canonical book is by Mark Twain “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs’s Court”. Obviously the premise is that the modern contemporary person is a beneficiary of the collected wisdom of the past, that prior people did not know.
- “We can put a man on the moon but we can’t X. / It’s not rocket science.”
We presume that the knowledge to do very complicated and impressive things is already demonstrated. If so, why is this particular problem so difficult to solve? - “Been there, done that.”
A very commonplace expression that says that once a lesson has been learned, or something experienced, we are supposed to progress from that point and are bored by repeating something we already know.
I like to repeat the expression “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.” People who develop some expertise already know what new ideas, products and services are likely to roll out to the general public. Think of them as ‘makers’ and ‘early adopters’ as well as ‘hackers’. People seek to improve a situation whether or not the rest of the public understands what the innovation is, they commit to living in the new, changed way even if it makes them appear strange and unfamiliar to the average Joe.
To be against judgment and ‘elite’ knowledge is to undermine the premises of modern Western societies. Understand that modern is the opposite of tribal. And so to accept modernity is to accept certain things that are not so obvious today. So I’ll take a moment to remind you.
- In a modern society, you accept that expert information can be applied to all people, no matter who they are. You have a right to question based on reason.
- In a modern society, you accept secular meritocracy.
- In a modern society, you accept conformity to norms and standards of your own choosing. You can be an individual.
- In a modern society, you accept that you can give and receive, buy and sell and otherwise interact with people not known to you, not related to you and not like you.
- In a modern society, you accept that you can use money and therefore have a specialized skill whose value can be transferred anywhere.
The opposite is the case in a tribal society:
- In a tribal society, you accept that only certain people can possess certain knowledge. You cannot question certain members of the tribe no matter what the reason.
- In a tribal society, people only inherit status or are granted status by the rulers, but demonstrated skill means nothing without the blessing of a tribal leader.
- In a tribal society, you are what people say you are. You conform to your predetermined role. You have no choice in the matter.
- In a tribal society, you communicate only through pre-existing channels. Never above or below your level. Marriages are arranged, for example.
- In a tribal society, your prospects are set. No matter how skilled you are, your work is owned by the tribe. You cannot rise above your tribal affiliation.
If you look at ‘intellectuals’ as a tribe, then you will believe that everything they do is necessarily elitist and done for the benefit of themselves and their relatives and friends. But Western institutions that are setup to attract, fund and support intellectuals are precisely the opposite. They promote that the new ideas, products and services will outlast the individual lives of their creators and thus can be passed down through the generations. This is the case with Universities, which are open to the public, and with public Corporations whose stocks can be owned by the public. Democracies allocate political power to the government through the participation of the public. This is modern.
If you withdraw your understanding and support for modern institutions, then you can only be a marginal participant in modern society. This is happening in the US. Anti-vaxxers have withdrawn their understanding and support of public health institutions, for example. Anarchists withdraw their understanding and support of the rule of law. Many people are now withdrawing their support and understanding of democratic institutions. I think the most catastrophic failure of Western society would follow the abandonment of the study of the development of Western Civilization itself, and I find evidence of that in the decreasing popularity of Classics and History in the Humanities. In fact, I believe it is an ignorance of these particular subjects that would lead to the inevitability of the interpretation of all intellectual work as tribal.
There is nothing to guarantee that Western civilization continues except its continued understanding, use and defense. So to disregard its intellectual fruits is the first step. This has been the program of historical revisionism aiming to paint Western Civilization as something other than what it is, as in the famous quote attributed to Gandhi .
Currently, many Americans take for granted that their inheritance in the West is strictly a function of free capital markets and science and technology with some small hat tip to the American Constitution - but that the realm of values and morals stands apart from the history of the West. This is unfortunate, shallow and exploitable. I think this failure recognize the depth and importance of Western modernism can likely reach crisis proportions, but in the end Western modernism will win. It is simply the matter of what enables the modern masses over primitive tribes - the durability, capacity and power of modern institutions over the inherent limits of tribal thinking.
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