Y'all: I confess to not being quite up to the task of following all the convolutions of all the threads and strands of discussion about "growth," for example, so I'll cast this before the multitudes of my betters for analysis.
"Intellectual" has gotten a bad rap over the years. I suspect that one of the primary causes is the snooty way those who think of themselves as intellectuals claim superiority over the more plain-spoken "folk." It is a natural reaction to this kind of snobbery to oppose it intuitively, and it seems that the logical and reason the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater--for example, all academics get tarred with the same brush when some hayseed emerges from the shrubbery in full anti-intellectual cry. Then the pendulum sways backwards as the "intellectuals" who feel gored by such cries or who seize upon any fragment, large or small, of the anti-intellectual rant and discredit all hayseeds, regardless of the meritorious part(s) imbedded within their outraged or even self-deprecating rhetoric. In both the "hayseed" camp and the "intellectual" camp there are solid thinkers and irrational poseurs who use diversionary tactics to "win," rather than find common ground and pick carefully through the thickets in a disciplined exchange. All the sound and fury may be insignificant to reasonable minds, but when penetration of the semantic foggery is attempted by such minorities, they are quickly shrouded by the smoke of indignation and they back off in frustration. Is this dichotomy real? If so, what is the cure? I hope that the best intellects in academia will step forward (perhaps in this forum, perhaps elsewhere) and set an example for us all. No doubt they will have to pick carefully through the aborted seedcoats and chaff for a few viable hayseeds, but the dialogue, one would hope, would pave the way toward removing the causes of anti-intellectualism at its root, much of it right under their feet. Noblesse Oblige? One of the first signs of this might be to look for merit in the statements of the inferior and build upon that/those point(s) rather than coyly suggesting the inferiority of the anti-intellectual (hayseed, academic, or ?) or outright putting him or her in his or her place. From that higher road, I wonder if error might then fall away and be replaced by reason? Might the kind of mutual respect often expressed on Ecolog be magnified and catch on across society? Just an idea . . . WT
