Don't Trust Smart People

Here's an interesting editorial that, I think, gets to the heart of our problems with certain literature. We wouldn't press the button - you'll see what that means.

Don't Trust Smart People

Very interesting . . .

As far as the "button" is concerned I think it's very easy to get caught up in the mood of a group. I remember very many years ago getting caught up in a student raid on another residential hall and the exhilaration at the time. Next day it seemed just stupid and puerile. And all involved had at least a modicum of education/intelligence to be at university. At least no violence was involved.

Not really that interesting. The article was moved but I found it easily enough. Using Heidegger and Sartre for examples because one became a Nazi and the other refused the Nobel Prize based on foolish pride and supported Communism isn't much of an example against intellectualism. Intellectual scientists might have found the technology to split atoms which permitted less intelligent scientists to build on their findings and create the H-bomb. But the scientists aren't the ones that decided to use it.

"Recently, On CBC Radio's Ideas, Peter Watson, the British writer who specializes in intellectual history, ended our interview with this clarion call: "Education is much, much better than ignorance!"

Who could disagree? As the producer, I ended the show there. I thought his comments sensible, even rousing. If the popular sentiment (and much of religion) tells us the world needs more love, education is a popular second. Who argues for ignorance?

But then I got thinking. Peter Watson wasn't talking about education as vocational training. He was talking about education as producing rational human beings who, with their knowledge, could slay ignorance: Educated people who thought for themselves and could discern the truth, independent of any ideology or promptings from authority.

I, too, long to believe this. But the history of intellectuals, especially in the last century, tells a different, sadder story. Let me unfold the argument, a quarrel that goes on in the minds of many.But then I got thinking. Peter Watson wasn't talking about education as vocational training. He was talking about education as producing rational human beings who, with their knowledge, could slay ignorance: Educated people who thought for themselves and could discern the truth, independent of any ideology or promptings from authority."

First of all, I did not hear the radio broadcast that Richard Handler refers to. Second of all, it's Handler's interpretation of what Peter Watson means by Education.

So Handler believes that education and intellectualism are the same thing. I have to disagree. I believe that education does "slay ignorance," but education doesn't create intellectuals. I don't see that those who graduate from college are necessarily rational free-thinking intellectuals. In fact, there are quite a few that I don't even consider very smart. And I don't think intellectualism necessarily gives people a "get out of stupid" free card, either. Discerning truths doesn't mean that those truths are free of subjective reasoning. And being intellectual doesn't make one free of ideoloies.

The greatest mistake of some intellectuals is the arrogance that they know more or better than others what defines a truth or they're part of a group that has a superiority complex.

Freedom from ignorance and intellectualism shouldn't ever be thrown in the same boat, because they're not the same; neither is education and intellectualism.

In all, I find the "viewpoint" that Handler presents rather weak in his arguments. He gives food to expand on the ideas he presents, but mostly his argument is rambling and more of a jumping off point for further discourse.