All, On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 11:35 AM, ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR <[email protected]> wrote: > [Ian] > You've had > Post-structuralism. > You've had > Post-Modernism > Thus side of the pond, we've even recently had > Post-Christian > What about > Post-Intellectualism? > > [Arlo] > This has been done, no? Donald Wood wrote "Post-Intellectualism and the > Decline of Democracy: The Failure of Reason and Responsibility in the > Twentieth Century" in 1996. > > From Amazon's site: Our society's institutional infrastructures—our > democratic political system, economic structures, legal practices, and > educational establishment—were all created as intellectual outgrowths of the > Enlightenment. All our cultural institutions are based on the intellectual > idea that an enlightened citizenry could govern its affairs with reason and > responsibility. In the late 20th century, however, we are witnessing the > disintegration of much of our cultural heritage. Wood argues that this is due > to our evolution into a ^Upost-intellectual society^R—a society characterized > by a loss of critical thinking, the substitution of information for > knowledge, mediated reality, increasing illiteracy, loss of privacy, > specialization, psychological isolation, hyper-urbanization, moral anarchy, > and political debilitation. These post-intellectual realities are all > triggered by three underlying determinants: the failure of linear growth and > expansion to sustain our economic system; the runaway information overload; > and technological determinism. Wood presents a new and innovative social > theory, challenging readers to analyze all our post-intellectual cultural > malaise in terms of these three fundamental determinants.
[Dan] Having not read Donald Wood's book I cannot comment on it other than to note it was written some 18 years ago and so might well be outdated. I should think that if he believes the culture is evolving then he is misusing the term... rather, devolving might a better way of putting it so far as this snippet goes. Like Dave says, it's more anti-intellectualism than it is post-intellectualism. Ray Bradbury's futuristic Fahrenheit 451 comes to mind but even so, I don't know that I would call that post-intellectualism either, other than it's a departure from critical thinking and creativity. The hippie movement of the 60s was also a departure from social norms but Robert Pirsig labeled that a regression to biological values rather than an expansion to something better. More and more, what we're seeing here in the States is a virulent form of religious fundamentalism not dissimilar to the Taliban in Afghanistan. I've read of surveys being done where only 25% of the people asked knew that the earth was roughly 4.5 billion years old. The majority seemed convinced of the young earth theory (less than 10,000 years old!) even though it is based on a literal interpretation of a metaphorical book. On the other side of the coin, one of the guys that I work at a dealership where I have an account was telling me how he went back to college to earn a degree in another field, one hopefully more amenable to his obtaining a job that pays better than minimum wage. He has a degree in oceanography but he lives in Illinois. Enough said. Anyway, he regaled me with a tale of how he has class in a classroom with roughly 30 other students. Walking down the hallway it was completely silent. He thought perhaps the room was empty... maybe they called off class and didn't tell him. Upon entering the room he saw every single student was on their smart phones texting, Facebooking, Twittering, whatever. They all seemed oblivious to the real people right beside them. I notice the same thing every single day... people walking through stores and down the street with a smart phone in hand hardly looking where they're going... drivers texting and calling people when they can barely manage to stay on the road in the first place... losing themselves in RPGs that simulate the real world yet allows gamers to become that which is impossible in life: winners instead of losers. Still, the www is a fabulous intellectual tool if used in that fashion so I don't think we can condemn it outright. Even so-called social media has profound intellectual implications... I use Twitter almost exclusively as a business tool and while I do have a Facebook account I rarely have the time to participate as fully as others do. Thank you, Dan http://www.danglover.com Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
