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elleng

(130,147 posts)
Mon Jul 11, 2016, 01:20 PM Jul 2016

The cult of ignorance in the United States: Anti-intellectualism and the "dumbing down" of America

'There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. It's the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility.

Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, says in an article in the Washington Post, "Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture; a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism."

There has been a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in America, unlike most other Western countries. Richard Hofstadter, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his book, Anti-Intellectualism In American Life, describes how the vast underlying foundations of anti-elite, anti-reason and anti-science have been infused into America's political and social fabric. Famous science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once said:
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of 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."
Mark Bauerlein, in his book, The Dumbest Generation, reveals how a whole generation of youth is being dumbed down by their aversion to reading anything of substance and their addiction to digital "crap" via social media.

Journalist Charles Pierce, author of Idiot America, adds another perspective:'>>>

https://www.sott.net/article/313177-The-cult-of-ignorance-in-the-United-States-Anti-intellectualism-and-the-dumbing-down-of-America

And this article is 2 years old!

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The cult of ignorance in the United States: Anti-intellectualism and the "dumbing down" of America (Original Post) elleng Jul 2016 OP
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time" LongtimeAZDem Jul 2016 #1
Carl Sagan? Check out Jennifer Margulis. proverbialwisdom Jul 2016 #3
if it's not in the bible it's not true. there's your source of anti-intellectualism nt msongs Jul 2016 #2
If it's not in the NYT, it's not true, the technique Chomsky demonstrated in "Manufacturing Consent" proverbialwisdom Jul 2016 #4
Will the gub'mint fund re-education camps like in China? Hoppy Jul 2016 #5

LongtimeAZDem

(4,494 posts)
1. “I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time"
Mon Jul 11, 2016, 01:28 PM
Jul 2016

"when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark , 1995

proverbialwisdom

(4,959 posts)
3. Carl Sagan? Check out Jennifer Margulis.
Mon Jul 11, 2016, 02:55 PM
Jul 2016
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan

SAGAN'S 1ST SPOUSE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis

Throughout her career, Margulis’ work could arouse intense objection (one grant application elicited the response, "Your research is crap, do not bother to apply again{4}), and her formative paper, "On the Origin of Mitosing Cells," appeared in 1967 after being rejected by about fifteen journals.

<>

In 1995, English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins had this to say about Lynn Margulis and her work:

"I greatly admire Lynn Margulis's sheer courage and stamina in sticking by the endosymbiosis theory, and carrying it through from being an unorthodoxy to an orthodoxy. I'm referring to the theory that the eukaryotic cell is a symbiotic union of primitive prokaryotic cells. This is one of the great achievements of twentieth-century evolutionary biology, and I greatly admire her for it."{24}


4. Sagan, Dorion, ed. (2012). Lynn Margulis: The Life and Legacy of a Scientific Rebel. White River Junction: Chelsea Green. ISBN 978-1-603-58446-3.

24. Margulis, Lynn, Gaia Is a Tough Bitch. Chapter 7 in The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution by John Brockman (Simon & Schuster, 1995)

DAUGHTER: http://jennifermargulis.net/
http://jennifermargulis.net/about/
https://www.amazon.com/Vaccine-Friendly-Plan-Effective-Health-Pregnancy/dp/1101884231/178-0574487-0383232

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