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Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America
Social dysfunction can be traced to the abandonment of reason


Post published by David Niose on Jun 20, 2015 in Our Humanity, Naturally



The tragedy in Charleston last week will no doubt lead to more discussion of several important and recurring issues in American culture—particularly racism and gun violence—but these dialogues are unlikely to bear much fruit until the nation undertakes a serious self-examination. Decrying racism and gun violence is fine, but for too long America’s social dysfunction has continued to intensify as the nation has ignored a key underlying pathology: anti-intellectualism.

America is killing itself through its embrace and exaltation of ignorance, and the evidence is all around us. Dylann Roof, the Charleston shooter who used race as a basis for hate and mass murder, is just the latest horrific example. Many will correctly blame Roof's actions on America's culture of racism and gun violence, but it's time to realize that such phenomena are directly tied to the nation's culture of ignorance.

In a country where a sitting congressman told a crowd that evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell,” (link is external) where the chairman of a Senate environmental panel brought a snowball (link is external) into the chamber as evidence that climate change is a hoax, where almost one in three citizens can’t name the vice president (link is external), it is beyond dispute that critical thinking has been abandoned as a cultural value. Our failure as a society to connect the dots, to see that such anti-intellectualism comes with a huge price, could eventually be our downfall.

In considering the senseless loss of nine lives in Charleston, of course racism jumps out as the main issue. But isn’t ignorance at the root of racism? And it’s true that the bloodshed is a reflection of America's violent, gun-crazed culture, but it is only our aversion to reason as a society that has allowed violence to define the culture. Rational public policy, including policies that allow reasonable restraints on gun access, simply isn't possible without an informed, engaged, and rationally thinking public.

Some will point out, correctly, that even educated people can still be racists, but this shouldn’t remove the spotlight from anti-intellectualism. Yes, even intelligent and educated individuals, often due to cultural and institutional influences, can sometimes carry racist biases. But critically thinking individuals recognize racism as wrong and undesirable, even if they aren’t yet able to eliminate every morsel of bias from their own psyches or from social institutions. An anti-intellectual society, however, will have large swaths of people who are motivated by fear, susceptible to tribalism and simplistic explanations, incapable of emotional maturity, and prone to violent solutions. Sound familiar?

And even though it may seem counter-intuitive, anti-intellectualism has little to do with intelligence. We know little about the raw intellectual abilities of Dylann Roof, but we do know that he is an ignorant racist who willfully allowed irrational hatred of an entire demographic to dictate his actions. Whatever his IQ, to some extent he is a product of a culture driven by fear and emotion, not rational thinking, and his actions reflect the paranoid mentality of one who fails to grasp basic notions of what it means to be human.

What Americans rarely acknowledge is that many of their social problems are rooted in the rejection of critical thinking or, conversely, the glorification of the emotional and irrational. What else could explain the hyper-patriotism (link is external) that has many accepting an outlandish notion that America is far superior to the rest of the world? Love of one’s country is fine, but many Americans seem to honestly believe that their country both invented and perfected the idea of freedom, that the quality of life here far surpasses everywhere else in the world.

But it doesn’t. International quality of life rankings (link is external) place America barely in the top ten. America’s rates of murder (link is external) and other violent crime dwarf most of the rest of the developed world, as does its incarceration rate (link is external), while its rates of education and scientific literacy are embarrassingly low (link is external). American schools, claiming to uphold “traditional values,” avoid fact-based sex education, and thus we have the highest rates of teen pregnancy (link is external) in the industrialized world. And those rates are notably highest where so-called “biblical values” are prominent. Go outside the Bible belt, and the rates generally trend downward (link is external).

As this suggests, the impact of fundamentalist religion in driving American anti-intellectualism has been, and continues to be, immense. Old-fashioned notions of sex education may seem like a relatively minor issue to many, but taking old-time religion too seriously can be extremely dangerous in the modern era. High-ranking individuals, even in the military (link is external), see a confrontation between good and evil as biblically predicted and therefore inevitable. They relish the thought of being a righteous part of the final days.

Fundamentalist religion is also a major force in denying human-caused climate change (link is external), a phenomenon that the scientific community has accepted for years. Interestingly, anti-intellectual fundamentalists are joined in their climate change denial with unusual bedfellows: corporate interests (link is external) that stand to gain from the rejection of sound science on climate.

Corporate influence on climate and environmental policy, meanwhile, is simply more evidence of anti-intellectualism in action, for corporate domination of American society is another result of a public that is not thinking critically. Americans have allowed their democracy to slip away, their culture overtaken by enormous corporations that effectively control both the governmental apparatus and the media, thus shaping life around materialism and consumption.

Indeed, these corporate interests encourage anti-intellectualism, conditioning Americans into conformity and passive acceptance of institutional dominance. They are the ones who stand to gain from the excessive fear and nationalism that result in militaristic foreign policy and absurdly high levels of military spending (link is external). They are the ones who stand to gain from consumers who spend money they don’t have on goods and services they don’t need. They are the ones who want a public that is largely uninformed and distracted, thus allowing government policy to be crafted by corporate lawyers and lobbyists. They are the ones who stand to gain from unregulated securities markets. And they are the ones who stand to gain from a prison-industrial complex that generates the highest rates of incarceration in the developed world.

Americans can and should denounce the racist and gun-crazed culture that shamefully resulted in nine corpses in Charleston this week, but they also need to dig deeper. At the core of all of this dysfunction is an abandonment of reason.

More on this subject in David Niose's latest book, Fighting Back the Right: Reclaiming America from the Attack on Reason (link is external)

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201506/anti-intellectualism-is-killing-america?fb_action_ids=10204120021056989&fb_action_types=og.shares

Reading isn't just for fags.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_GNFQk-_Ss

Why so self centered? Lack of intellect has been killing the quality of humanity itself. Reading, learning, playing, such sctivities should never be halted. They boost creativity and enthusiasm in a person accomplishing fulfillment of happiness. A little intellectualism would do much benefit to not just america but the whole damn world.

I don't think that Anti-intellectualism is the main reason for killing in America.
In my opinion, main reason for it is poverty and racism in American society, unresolved problem in the past 200 years of history in USA.
All other symptoms are a consequence and not the cause of all these massacres and violence in America.
If a large group of people is excluded from the education system, without the possibility of progress in their professional career and hope for the better future, it is clear that such situation create tensions and resentment, which then leads to violence and conflict.
Fundamentalist religion is only consequence of such a situation but not the first and foremost cause.

Author nailed it.

More people need to read this excellent article. Author possesses great acuity.

/decries anti-intellectualism
/decries "gun violence"
/decries racism

Mala in se violence enabled by fundamentally racist "gun control" laws* according to public records (legislative history, intent, contemporary newspapers' articles & columns back when modern "gun control" began), advocated, enacted and enforced by those who simultaneously claim to be intellectuals but act like morons who shouldn't be held responsible for their indefensible evil of *disarming only law-abiding, mentally-sound, sober victims, for violent criminals' safety.

Epic fail.

There is a great sayings such as "Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint."
Lewis H. Lapham

There are many kinds of truth. And there are many kinds of intellectualism. In the great Venn diagram of life, they don't always overlap

Americans should ofcourse punish and serve justice to the racist and ammunition friendly behavior in the society that has unfortunately resulted in nine dead bodies in Charleston, but they need to do a little more thorough research regarding it. There is always a deep reason behind such dysfunctional activities.

Agreed. Psychologists should use these cunts to research over, because these scums are what totally sick in the mind really means. Instead of locking them in a jail and trying to change them as a person, 'research' over them and find out who the f they really are

Gun control is racist? So in your mind "law-abiding, mentally sound, sober victims" represents one race, and "violent criminals" represents another? I bet I can guess which race is which in that equation.

Black Egyptian Jesus, please save me from these racist redneck pseudo-intellectuals. Seriously I can't believe you thought you'd get away with a comment that ignorant,  this is the internet not your local KKK congregation. Find some intellectual rigor or get the fuck out, because right now you're an embarrassment to the internet and the species (this includes your precious white race).

I don't attribute these problems to anti-intellectualism. Racism isn't an anti-intellectualism problem, it's a fundamentalist and anti-empathy problem. Creating artificial categorizations of people so you can differentiate yourself from them is about antipathy: you don't see a person, you see a Jew, feminist, black, gay, immigrant, Muslim, or whatever other bullshit label you stick on people so you can convince yourself they're different than you. And because you have convinced yourself you're different, you feel no empathy to them because you can't relate to their humanity. And when anti-empathy meets fundamentalism, you get tragedy. This is the great malaise of American society. Anti-intellectualism is certainly a problem, but it is not necessarily this problem.

In California, since 1980, higher education spending has decreased by 13 percent in inflation adjusted dollars, whereas spending on California's prisons and associated correctional programs has skyrocketed by 436 percent.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/06/california-prisons-colleges_n_1863101.html

The US has More Jails than Colleges
Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/jails-colleges-map-prisoners-live/#cRZG1m1LrAizFGjZ.99

Since the Big Bang hasn't been proven, except by quantum math that can also be used to prove that the Big Bang never existed, we are curious about whether or not it is intellectualism that is destroying America, rather than believing the evidences that God exists, that are in front of our eyes throughout the whole universe. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=737322.msg10718395#msg10718395

:)

I for one welcome ignorance. Since we compete for jobs and money in our capitalist system, the more stupid people there are in the economy the better off I am. So please do prattle on about your conspiracy theories during any job interviews. 

Of course we need a job just to live. But few people focus on the importance of what might exist after life. If it is a different life, one that depends on how a person lives this life, it might be important to consider it. After all, if we don't consider it, how can we say that we can't know about it?

:)

Absolutely correct, fellow capitalist, right up until the moment ignorance creates enough fear and hatred to spark violence (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_J7kPNe7fI) that touches you. Then, when suddenly you realize ignorance was the only true enemy all along, it'll be too late.

"The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance."
-Socrates, Diogenes Laertius.

I would add Dogma remains our greatest enemy, it can be argued that dogma is a product of ignorance.

well intellectuallity its like you know you do you dont know you teach i mean intellectuals are needed to direct instructions to people who really are knoleadge workers and do and some intellectualss just tend to try to teach and even sometimes their not executeves and dont do nothing of good pourpouses even some nervouse and wrong ideas but ideas of even politics are needed.

So true

Dogma itself isn't a problem. For example, the belief that the Constitution and the values it represents are the cornerstone of American society is a type of dogmatic belief. Dogma itself doesn't pose a problem unless dogma intertwines with fundamentalism, where the violation of dogmatic beliefs calls for unduly harsh punishment.

Dogma by definition is the acceptance of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. This is a problem, you should only accept anything that you yourself have verified.

Dictionary.com lists four definitions:

1. an official system of principles or tenets concerning faith, morals, behavior, etc., as of a church.

2. a specific tenet or doctrine authoritatively laid down, as by a church

3. prescribed doctrine proclaimed as unquestionably true by a particular group

4. a settled or established opinion, belief, or principle: the classic dogma of objectivity in scientific observation.

Especially as in the case of the fourth definition, not every definition of dogma requires the negative aspects as you have presented them. The American belief in constitutional democracy and republicanism are both dogmatic, as is the notion of objectivity in scientific observation, as the definition points out. These are things society overwhelming accepts as good things, so the problem is not with dogma, it's fundamentalism. A global dogmatic belief that it is wrong to harm other individuals would be immensely beneficial to humanity, but there are religious fundamentalists to who believe harming others is justified by their religious dogmatic beliefs. The problem there isn't dogma, it's fundamentalism.

Which constitution? As far as I know it has been amended 27 times, the only constant is change. A shared belief that its a bad idea to harm others is not based on dogma, but rather self knowledge.

"Constitutional democracy" is the dogmatic belief, not the Constitution itself. The fact that we keep amending it to make it work for us instead of just chucking it out and declaring the idea a failure when it doesn't proves my point further. We are dogmatic in our adherence to constitutional democracy and republicanism. And a shared belief that its a bad idea to harm can come from self knowledge and be dogmatic. They're not mutually exclusive. That's kinda my whole point in saying dogma isn't the problem, fundamentalism is.