Intellectuals
Insulated visionaries responsible for virtually every bad idea without any verifiability or accountability metrics.
An anointed class that values abstraction, idealism, and inhumane narratives in their models in lieu of reality, consequences, and wisdom.
Intellectuals are largely defined by baseless a priori notions that prescribe their positions on any given matter. Their visions serve as a substitute for both questions and answers.
It is common for intellectuals to view themselves as anointed figures. This is predominantly due to two forms of insulation; the rest is explained by an air of esteem that they afford themselves as a by-product of these barriers. First, intellectuals gravitate towards abstractions which, by their nature, fail to adhere to most of the reality beyond the metaphysical. Such examinations can be valuable, but the focus of most intellectuals are the ideas themselves, and this protects bad ideas from the grounding features of reality. It is often considered that the more untethered the idea, the more profound it is, and the more worthy of celebration the intellectual.
There are intellectuals who seek to create models tethered to the real world informed by hard evidence and coherence. These thinkers do not tend to view themselves as anointed because they are readily reminded of the intrinsic limitations of abstractions when stretched across reality – the holes become apparent. For the rest, their failure to think coherently renders them difficult or impossible to grapple with, and their untenable positions are somehow interpreted by them as an indication of their fortitude and rigour.
Second, they are insulated by their locale – academic settings and unidirectional or highly constrained mediums. A group of captive students incapable of competing intellectually or rhetorically is the favoured setting for such thinkers. Cocktail parties, the internet, and the unemployment line are also popular. When intellectuals share their ideas in a public setting, it is often done through published articles or books. While these mediums can be contended with, they are infrequently read by ordinary citizens, and when they are, their critiques generally do not reach the intellectual. Even if they did, an anointed intellectual is likely to disregard the input of a lesser being. Most intellectuals avoid public debates at all costs because they run the risk of embarrassment, whether it is due to their ramblings reaching a larger audience or because they fear a formidable adversary. They may post material online, but is rarely an exchange with a competent opponent – they prefer masturbation to intercourse.
American author, economist, political commentator and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Thomas Sowell, assessed intellectuals at great lengths in his book Intellectuals and Society. Among many other gems:
The anointed enjoy ample opportunity to have their attitudes guide their work, not principles, especially when these attitudes are prevalent among their peers and insulated from consequential feedback from the outside world. This works out well for them because they are generally obsessed with change and not the transmission of wisdom or practical knowledge.
They prefer to analyze and conceptualize people as abstractions or as members of categories, but then convey their concerns as individualistic because it suits their agenda. They deliberately avoid recognizing the transience of individuals through such categories so they can frame social issues as problems for which they alone possess the cure. They believe that institutions are the cause of problems, and that it is their job, as anointed intelligentsia, to solve them for us. Additionally, they seek to prevent them from happening at all.
Predominantly preoccupied with gaining and maintaining the moral hegemony of the anointed above all else, including the desires or interests they claim benefit from their initiatives - the poor, minorities, or disenfranchised. That being said, they are willing to sacrifice the well-being of those they profess to be primarily concerned with when it conflicts with the symbolic issue they feel defines their vision.
If pressed, they will generally acknowledge human limitations, but they do not build them into their vision, which disqualifies them as worthy contributors to solving complex problems.(1)
It would be difficult to state it more poignantly than Sowell, and his descriptions are both clear and cutting.
In many ways, these are predictable features of intellectuals. The abstract realm is a wonderland of infinite possibilities, and it will attract certain personalities. Due to the inherent shapelessness of the landscape, our attitudes will tend to guide us. Introducing a principle into this realm creates boundaries, which many intellectuals consider inhibiting. In lieu of establishing a concrete principle and having it guide us through the terrain, we permit some approximation of roaming to orient us until we reach a destination concordant with our attitudes. Throughout this pursuit, we are pretending that our minds are blank in a sense, unbiased and merely floating through a space of fair examination. This is false of course, but we are experts at fooling ourselves, and the fact that our immediate circle reinforces these misguided notions (likely because they benefit from them as well), solidifies this cognitive malpractice.
It is perhaps the most characteristic of the intellectual that he judges new ideas not by their specific merits but by the readiness with which they fit into his general conceptions, into the picture of the world which he regards as modern or advanced. Intellectuals are masters of the technique of conveying ideas but are usually amateurs so far as the substance of what they convey is concerned.(2)
The gravitation towards and immersion into this realm that immediately warps itself around bias invites the architect to cut seams and smooth edges as he see fit. The comfort and deceitful idealism that emerges soon thereafter serves as the foundation for the remaining transgressions. The push towards changes and revolution over practical knowledge or wisdom, the depiction of humans as abstract over individual examinations, and the recognition of categorical transience all contribute to this chimeric egocentricism. Because the intellectual realm is a constructed bias abstraction, we will inevitably witness ourselves on every signpost towards our settlement.
The erosion of individual agency is expected – people are both too benign and too complicated for the intellectual. Institutions possess formalized traits and they are responsible for guiding people, as such, intellectuals love their domineering image, especially when it has a ready-made purpose that may be assessed relative to our ideals. Hence, institutions will be viewed as the source of all social ills, and the intellectual the antidote. The novelty of this realization compels us to believe we serve a special role in correcting them. We will find a way to convert this novelty into a sense of moral duty, justifying our bias as noble, and with our newly anointed status, we have become the guardian of the disenfranchised. That is, unless they conflict with our posturing, then we will remove them from the equation – reality is far too inconvenient for the intellectual.
When pressed on the impossibilities of our ideals and the inconsistencies of our approach, we will speak out both sides of our mouth. We will defend our intellectual awareness by acknowledging that human limitations exist when addressed formally, but due to the realistic tethering of such a position, we cannot have it built into our model. Idealism has no time for reality, or for people. This has been the case since intellectual models have become endemic to academic settings, and the increased standards of living that have accompanied the increase in wealth in some countries have made these fruitless capitulations all the more common. A decrease of existential concerns appears to produce an increase in aimless intellectual formulation and subsequent pandering. Most intellectuals currently oscillate between bored and unimaginative.
Intellectuals consistently occupy the top spot on the podium for mental gymnastics. They love to deconstruct everything except their own positions.
(1) Sowell, T., Intellectuals and Society, 2011, Revised and enlarged edition 2022, Basic Books, New York.
(2) Hayek, F. A., The Intellectuals and Socialism, 1949, Kessinger Publishing LLC, Montana.
See: STUPID, IDEALISM, SOCIALISM
Posted: 19 Feb 2023
