In January, 1980 Isaac Asimov wrote an essay in News Week about anti-intellectualism in the United States. In his essay he states: “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’.”
When I first read the above quote I thought, ‘what an awesome quote, I’ll use it, post it on Facebook, and just sound smart – an intellectual.’ However, it’s only recently that I tried to understand what anti-intellectualism is; what Isaac was talking about forty years ago. That is when I came across this definition on Wikipedia:
‘Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, and science as impractical, politically motivated, and even contemptible human pursuits.‘
Now for a confession, I wrote this post for the first time on the 12th June 2020. I am now rewriting it because my first attempt at the post was shit. I was writing the piece from a position of ignorance – I was being an anti-intellectual – to my great shame. I didn’t take the topic seriously enough because I didn’t understand it. The more I’ve dug into this the more I think we need to be concerned about it. We should be discussing this more seriously, more widely. We should address ignorance with information, educate the uneducated opinion. I see anti-intellectualism everywhere and we need to fight it and fear it. Read the above paragraph again and then consider all the greatest achievements we as a species have attained. Without art, science, philosophy, literature – what would we have left?
40 years later after Asimov wrote his article I see the signs everywhere; anti-intellectualism is winning the battle.
What is happening? We stopped reading.
A 2009 study conducted by UCLA professor, Patricia Greenfield, showed that the more technology plays a role in our lives so our skills in critical thinking and analysis decline. Visual media allows people to process more information, but does “not allow time for reflection, analysis or imagination…”
Greenfield explains; “studies show that reading develops imagination, induction, reflection and critical thinking, as well as vocabulary. Reading for pleasure is the key to developing these skills. Students today have more visual literacy and less print literacy. Many students do not read for pleasure and have not for decades.”
The less we read the less critically we think and less knowledgeable we are. Is technology to blame for this anti-intellectual wave that undermines what educated experts have to say, that constantly looks to simplify problems and solutions to 3 word slogans?
I posit that technology is amplifying the problem, but isn’t the root cause of the issue.
The first parent of anti-intellectualism.
Anti-intellectualism can be traced back to two parents. The first is political correctness. Criticism of people who hold uninformed opinions is equated to an attack on the right of those people to hold those opinions. As Asimov implies, your ignorant stance deserves as much attention as another’s informed and considered opinion. It is no longer seen as polite or appropriate to call somebody wrong or ignorant. In fact, if a person who knows what they are talking about challenges someone who holds a position based on opinion and hearsay, the informed person is vilified, called elitist and demonised.
And technology amplifies this inability to challenge and engage in constructive debate. We constantly see this in social media. Trolling of people who hold informed positions that go against the majority. Experts being told they’re arrogant or ‘evil’ for telling someone they’re wrong. Modern technology makes having expansive debates difficult. We now argue complex problems with 280 characters. Our online news media focus on 15 second soundbites and 5 word headlines. It is almost impossible to take a nuanced stance that requires explanation.
Furthermore, with the internet everyone’s opinions, no matter how ludicrous, enjoys an equal opportunity to garner an audience online. In fact, the more radical and controversial your opinion, the more social media algorithms are likely to present your content to the online world. Outrage and extremism deliver audiences. Truth and knowledge no longer makes one’s opinion more powerful than anyone else’s. The validity of a position is based on how large an audience that message garners, not how accurate it is. We live in an age of – if you say it to enough people enough times it will become true.
The second parent of anti-intellectualism.
The second parent to the anti-intellectual trend is the move by our political leaders to accept anti-intellectualism as valid political strategy. Anti-intellectualism in political terms is populism.
Consider the fact that across the globe, countries with conservative leaning governments have, for the past four decades, slowly eroded funding to support arts and humanities. This move is driven by the view that the humanities are generally hostile to conservative political interests and policies.
Political parties in their quest to form governments secretly want a populace who don’t question, who accept blindly and who mistakenly believe they understand an issue because they can recite a three word slogan. Elections are won with fear and outrage. Politicians create an other, build fear for an imagined threat and then offer themselves up as a solution. When a populace don’t think critically the political discourse becomes oversimplified, ignorant, and designed to create outrage and fear. Extremism is what makes it onto our media feeds – because we eat it up. There is no limit to the fear and the indignation we want to experience. Our elections are now littered with extreme statements and hollow promises of handouts and victories – which are unlikely to be realised. Voters no longer critically evaluate what politicians and political parties say and promise. Most of us don’t know how.
In the process political organisations have become experts at marketing. They manipulate the 24 hour news cycle. Talking points are based on what will enjoy cut-through and ring true with an audience – not what is true or newsworthy. And our news channels are no longer held accountable for informing us, they now focus on what drives clicks and advertising revenue. News as entertainment. A message no longer needs to be true, it just needs an audience who want to hear it – who want to believe it.
Elections are won on fear, not on reason and definitely not by offering a vision of what is possible. Our leaders teach us to want what we had, not what could be. Think about it; a vision to deliver a new future requires change and change requires our critical examination and thoughtful evaluation. And our politicians, in turn, would have to consider true reformative policies. They would have to explain their reasoning and hope that what they’re saying isn’t confusing our too high-brow. A politician can ill afford to make voters feel uneducated or ignorant at the risk of being labeled ‘elitist’. There is too much risk and effort needed for governments to offer us something different, something new.
Anti-intellectualism has stolen from us our ability to dream, to imagine a future that is better, to believe there is something more to strive for.