
What's Wrong with Public Intellectuals? - benbreen
http://chronicle.com/article/Whats-Wrong-With-Public/189921/
======
AnimalMuppet
There's been a style change. People used to be impressed by high-sounding
prose. Writing the way he favors impressed.

But things changed, and now people suspect that it's a smokescreen to hide BS
behind. The present style is for clarity rather than impressiveness.

Interestingly, the article itself displays the problem. It tries to hard to
have the impressive style. That style gets in the way of actually _saying_
something. (In the end, the article does in fact say something. But the style
makes it harder to wade through. Instead of "trying to get readers to reach
higher", it becomes "selecting only those readers who are willing to put up
with that", which is not the same thing.)

~~~
ruricolist
I was just thinking to myself the other day that the danger of actually taking
the time to write something thoughtful and cogent the days is that once you
have convinced the intelligent, open-minded readers, that leaves everyone else
to write comments. Which means when people come to look at the article in the
future, and skip to the comments to get a sense of what kind of reaction
people had, they get precisely the wrong impression.

This is an interesting article. It's not a "think piece" about writing "these
days". It's a serious attempt to understand just what "public intellectuals"
were in the first place, what conditions made them possible, and what part of
that, if any, can be revived, or is worth reviving.

He might be completely wrong. But he deserves a little better than TL;DR
because he dared to write above the eighth grade level.

------
tn13
One of the best criticism and analysis of public intellectuals I have read is
in the Thomas Sowell's book Intellectuals. Ironically, being an intellectual
himself a lot of his words apply to him as well.

One of the most common mistake we people make is to think of intellectuals as
some higher beings. It is true than an educationist or economists will know
lot more than an average Joe about their respective fields. But the
probability that he will make wrong decisions is not drastically different
because the real world is far more complex and the amount of stuff that we
dont know is simple too large.

For example a professional shooter will be able to score much higher than an
average Joe. But if the objective is to get a "100%" score then both Joe and
the professional shooter are likely to fail with near same probability.

~~~
lurcio
Steve Fuller's "The Intellectual" is an amusing take on the history and role.
(It's quite anglo-centric & comes from a more liberal reference point than
Sowell).

------
arca_vorago
"If there is a task, it might be to participate in making "the public" more
brilliant, more skeptical, more disobedient, more capable of self-defense, and
more dangerous again—dangerous to elites, and dangerous to stability..."

Honestly I think this is the problem. There has been a steady wave of anti-
intellectualism throughout certain parts of the country, and in particular the
education system itself. This result in a level of distrust in "intellectuals"
that creates cultural filter-bubbles and it's very hard to bust other peoples
bubbles without putting them on the defensive.

The bottom line is that TPTB don't desire an intellectual public. They are
harder to control, are less likely to conform or be silent, etc. I've heard it
put like this: "They want someone just smart enough to push papers but not
enough to ask too many questions."

Add on top of that the major chilling effects of an increasingly global
surveillance state that is edging towards totalitarian facism, and it's easy
to understand how many of the intellectuals simply just go about their lives
and try not to rock the boat. A good example of this is the state of the
fourth estate, where currently just about every reporter who actually goes to
the DC press club is more like a stenographer than a reporter. "Officials
sources say..." is their calling card (keep an eye out for this phrase). If
they rock the boat too much, they get dis-invited from the party in one way or
another.

Honestly I think the state of public intellectualism is much more tied into
class warfare than anyone has articulated yet.

This is also why I think that art is the new medium for intellectuals. In a
surveillance state, subtle and subversive artistic endeavors seem to be the
most likely to positively influence without creating defensiveness, while at
the same time flying under the normal dissident surveillance radar.

Do not be fooled, with current legislation such a TPP and Net Neutrality, this
is only the beginning of censorship and the chilling effect. Only the
beginning. They ignored the internet and let us win the 90's crypto wars, but
now they recognize the internet as a threat and "it must be brought under
_control_." It's all about control. (as opposed to safety)

------
dredmorbius
Sigh. While I'm interested to see the discussion this generates, the prose is
turgid. Nine pages wrapped around a small number of nuggets, including some
interesting history, but the core of which is this (edited down further for
brevity):

 _The huge personal disappointment—and it puzzled me for a long time—was that
junior professors did not, by and large, give us work I wanted to print [in
"n+1"]. I knew their professional work was good. These were brilliant thinkers
and writers. Yet the problems I encountered ... were absolutely not those of
academic stereotype ... the "inability" to address a nonacademic audience. The
embarrassing truth was ... [that w]hen these brilliant people contemplated
writing for the "public," it seemed they merrily left difficulty at home,
leapt into colloquial language with both feet, added unnatural (and frankly
unfunny) jokes, talked about TV, took on a tone chummy and unctuous. They
dumbed down, in short—even with the most innocent intentions. The public, even
the "general reader," seemed to mean someone less adept, ingenious, and
critical than themselves.... The public signified fun, frothy, friendly....
[T]alking down to readers in a colorless fashion-magazine argot is such second
nature that any alternative seems out of place._

 _This was emphatically not what the old "public intellect," and Partisan
Review, had addressed to the public. Please don’t blame the junior professors,
though. (Graduate students, it must said, did much better for n+1, as they do
still.)..._

 _But the additional philosophical element that made this complicated
arrangement work, and the profound belief that sustained the fiction, on all
sides, and made it "real" ... was an aspirational estimation of "the public."
Aspiration in this sense ... [is] something like a neutral idea or expectation
that you could, or should, be better than you are—and that naturally you want
to be better than you are, and will spend some effort to become capable of
growing—and that every worthy person does. My sense of the true writing of the
"public intellectuals" of the Partisan Review era is that it was always
addressed just slightly over the head of an imagined public—at a height where
they must reach up to grasp it. But the writing seemed, also, always just
slightly above the Partisan Review writers themselves. They, the
intellectuals, had stretched themselves to attention, gone up on tiptoe,
balancing, to become worthy of the more thoughtful, more electric tenor of
intellect they wanted to join. They, too, were of "the public," but a public
that wanted to be better, and higher._

Which I largely agree with. It's a discussion I've been having elsewhere.

But my God, Mark! Fewer words. More meaning.

~~~
mrxd
> Which I largely agree with… But my God, Mark! Fewer words.

So in fact you disagree. More junior professor writing that you don't have to
reach up to grasp.

~~~
dredmorbius
This wasn't a case of needing to reach up, but to slog through.

To give a case of an author I've discovered recently who manages just the
opposite: William Ophuls. He writes on a difficult, complex, and diverse topic
(political systems response to a world of limits), but does so with an economy
of words, a superfluity of information, an elegance, and all while maintaining
interest and engagement. I'm still mulling over what he's written at a month
or two's remove, and want to re-enter it again. I picked up a great deal
reading his works, _Plato 's Revenge_ and _Immoderate Greatness_.

 _That_ is mastery of language.

Mark's writing isn't.

~~~
mrxd
> This wasn't a case of needing to reach up, but to slog through.

Is there a distinction?

Once I read a book that was partly about the French philosopher Maurice
Merleau-Ponty. The author included a short quotation from one of his works
translated into English, which I struggled to fully grasp. The original French
version had been included as a footnote, so I decided to give that a shot with
my limited high school French.

With the help of a dictionary and a lot of struggle, I was finally able to
understand. But going back to the translation, I couldn't find anything wrong
with it. It seemed like a perfectly good interpretation. I understood because
I made something hard to understand even harder, not by making it easier.
Increasing the difficulty forced me to slow down and focus.

You're free to define mastery of language as writing which feels effortless to
read. But in my experience, the brain is a muscle which grows by putting it
under strain. It may be beautiful, but for me that kind of writing is a waste
of time.

------
eruditely
All public intellectuals that propose or push their body of work should be
forced to offer warranty or insurance on said work so if the results do not
turn out there can be consequences.

Just like every one else.

[http://www.propertarianism.com/2014/10/25/speaking-
honestly-...](http://www.propertarianism.com/2014/10/25/speaking-honestly-vs-
truthfully-vs-dishonestly/)

Promise to truthful speech as opposed to free speech.

~~~
freshhawk
So if this idea gains popularity and the chilling effect results in a decline
in new ideas being presented for discussion and debate in the public sphere
which then results in stagnation ... what consequences can I impose on you?

------
PaulHoule
You get what people pay for.

I was watching Fox News at the gym today, side by side with CNN.

On CNN the news was about terrorist attacks, wars, and a blizzard in the
Northeast. It might be the daily bummer, but it least it was News.

On Fox News they are indignant because some people didn't like a movie that
was released a month ago. This segways through something I can't get through
the closed captions and then they're talking about what a visionary Daniel
Patrick Moynihan was in 1965.

There is a market for what there is a market for; that's TV but it is the same
for books and magazines.

On top of that there are quite a few fields that are burned out. For instance
up till 1968 there was a compelling literature on anarchism. Then you read
Foucault and even though you feel the blood-chilling pain of humanity ground
down by Leviathan but in touch with why it is necessary.

Then you had identity politics, which was a good idea at the time but pretty
soon it is part of the problem because you get black and white people
suffering from the same problems and not recognizing it.

For instance, the police department in the nearest city always has some
incident where a cop shoots a black or (less often) a black shoots a cop.
Tensions are high and many blacks fear being a victim of police violence.

Now the guy who cuts our hay would be white as a sheet except that he spends a
lot of time outside. He's a man of the highest care and integrity; he's driven
heavy machinery for a lifetime and never hit an animal. He's opposed to gun
control because he thinks he might need guns to defend himself from government
tyranny.

Oddly enough in the 60s it was urban black people who were fascinated with
armed insurrection and you had the Day Hall takeover at Cornell and the black
panthers.

Well you go up against Leviathan and you get smashed. Now black people are too
smart for that shit and now it is rural whites getting into barricade
situations with the cops. (i.e the evolution from the Philadelphia MOVE house
to Waco)

If you start talking sense you get horrible trouble from all sides, for
instance, liberals love the idea of investment in broadband but try saying
that the CWA might be part of the problem. As for conservatives, they seem to
be annoyed that the outside world exists at all and would rather be talking
about the days of Moses and Abraham.

~~~
yodsanklai
> On CNN the news was about terrorist attacks, wars, and a blizzard in the
> Northeast

Whenever I go to the US, I get to watch CNN at the airport (this time a couple
of days ago, waiting in the immigration line). It strikes me that I always see
images about war. The US are in a state of perpetual (defensive) war just as
described by Orwell.

~~~
PaulHoule
Well we are not directly involved in all the wars. For instance I want to be
bullish on Nigeria but Boko Haram is a real problem. Also the Ukraine is out
of our hands, no way we could fight the Russians on their own turf. Certainly
nobody in Europe has the balls to do anything about it since Russia might quit
sending them methane.

Even when you look at the terrorism issue I think Europe is much more
vulnerable than the US. The US is by no means perfect but Muslims come here
and get jobs and own businesses and they don't drink and their kids don't f
__k up cars at the mall. If you want to wear a Burka or some other kind of
headscarf we don 't give you trouble, we have the first Amendment because we
know how much trouble an "established religion" caused in England.

In France and other euro countries they warehouse Muslims in Big Block
apartments out of some Le Corbusier nightmare on the edge of town (where euro
people don't want to live) and they live off welfare and it takes hours and
hours to get anywhere on public transit. Muslims there have grievances that go
far beyond the indignities of being dissed in comic strips. On the other hand
I am personally pissed at the Boston Bombers because we gave them a safe place
to live where nobody wants to kill you because you are a Chechen. (We do have
idiots in the US who attach Sikhs because they hate Muslims or attack Iranians
because they hate Iraqis, but this is really a lunatic fringe.)

When CNN is not talking about war it is talking about some plane that
disappeared or how the daughter of somebody famous was drowned in a bathtub or
how the Republicans and Democrats can't agree on the budget (i.e. fund
Homeland Security so we can avoid the kind of attacks that hit the Euro zone,
fund NASA so we can get astronauts home from the ISS...)

------
DownvoteMeToWin
It always fascinates me when those who are self-styled representatives of the
public good fail to see how their empathic desires inevitably become
infantilization and then outright jealousy.

Academics didn't just wake up and exploit musical genres as the vector of
teaching dialectics. That was an act of desperation after a grand collapse of
academic influence in the late 1970s.

Once the public learned that the academic class would 1. Rush to their
defense, 2. Could weave up tales of oppression with little proof and 3. Could
convert those tales into public spending programs, the public gamed the
academics. The more exotic the abuse, the more hush money poured in. Once the
oil shocks happened and the USD became fiat, the academic class had hit
diminishing returns: now we could export inflation, now ANYONE can rabble
rouse for profit, not just the learned.

The public became smarter than the academics and they haven't been forgiven
since.

