The Intellectual Crash of 2009

[babylonsister]

The Intellectual Crash of 2009

by Lee Siegel

snip//

As a result of our yapping, endlessly banal, issue-dominated culture, the intellectuals, who work with ideas the way a Realtor works with property, are out of work. No wonder we are surrounded by the Limbaughs, and the Coulters, and the Jim Cramers, the buffoon-priests who preside over the ongoing national game of issue ping-pong. Lacking ideas to grab our attention and make us focus, the intellectuals have given way to ranters, abusers, and screamers, who have the effect of both grabbing our attention and freeing us from having to pay attention.

Of course, no one should blame the intellectuals for not being able to grasp our fathomless economic mess. An old joke went that only two people in history understood Hegel, and even they misunderstood him. Well, the only people who understand the present crisis are economists and tax lawyers, and even they misunderstand it. I have seen award-winning poets and novelists nearly reduced to tears trying to comprehend the relationship between mortgage-backed securities and recession.

Still, the question remains whether we are really the worse off because of the superannuation of ideas and of the people who have them. Not necessarily.

Ideas drove the various responses to the economic calamities of the 1920s—the result was totalitarian ideologies on the left and the right and the annihilation of tens of millions of people, all in the name of one idea or another. The Cold War provoked an incredible intellectual ferment, not just in political rumination, but in every area of culture, from the postwar novel to abstract expressionism, yet that conceptually heated atmosphere also created paranoia across the political spectrum, as well as an endless cycle of payback and score-settling. And the rifts produced by the idea-besotted '60s continue to bedevil us.

Yeats might have been right when he wrote that “an intellectual hatred is the worst.” We, on the other hand, are not in the grip of inflexible principles and unwavering obsessions; we are not motivated by unexamined emotional wounds that have disguised themselves as ideas. We (extremists not included) apply ourselves to the facts as they arise, with a (relative) minimum of conceptual bias. That does not seem to have made our public life less polarized, but at least it is keeping it peaceful and (relatively speaking) civil.

There are dangers, though, that accompany our idea-impoverished condition. Ideas don’t just make sense of reality; they keep our perception of it clear. With the intellectuals off the job, gross distortions of our condition and its broader context may well multiply the way crime would increase if all the cops were let go.

more...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-25/the-intellectual-crash-of-2009/full/

[BirminghamExaminer]

1. Gosh, I thought I understood Hagel perfectly.

[Demeter]

2. This Guy Is a Phony Intellectual

His writing is execrable, too.

[babylonsister]

3. Somone thinks otherwise...

Lee Siegel has written about culture and politics and is the author of three books: Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination; Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television; and, most recently, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. In 2002, he received a National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism.

[Demeter]

4. Forgive Me, But I'm STILL Not Impressed

Ayn Rand was called an intellectual, too, and look where that got us.

[babylonsister]

5. Well, I'll be sure and run every article by you from now on,

because of your obviously superior intellect. :eyes:

This forum is for opinions. His is as valid as yours, even if you don't like it.

[Tansy_Gold]

9. Opinions are not facts; I thought we were allowed to disagree with opinions

Fact is (pun intended) I think he's a pompous bore, too.

<snip>

What we never hear about in the popular media—where intellectual discussion once took place—is debate over fundamental meanings, or essential definitions, or connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena. Those are the elements of an idea, which is the challenge consciousness makes to concrete reality. When Archimedes said, “Give me a lever that is long enough, and I will move the world,” he was talking about how you can think your way into a new actuality

<snip>

Just because the intellectual discussion isn't taking place in the "popular" media doesn't mean it's not taking place. Believe it or not, it takes place just about every day right here on DU, on countless blogs, in zillions of coffee shops, around kitchen tables, in college classrooms. Maybe Mr. Siegel needs to step away from his computer and get outside a little more.

Oh, and by the way. *I* am an "award-winning novelist" and I'm not "reduced to tears trying to comprehend the relationship between mortgage-backed securities and recession." However, I am not a poet, so that must explain it.


Tansy Gold

[Miss Authoritiva]

6. Precisely.

What we never hear about in the popular media —- where intellectual discussion once took place -— is debate over fundamental meanings, or essential definitions, or connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena. Those are the elements of an idea, which is the challenge consciousness makes to concrete reality.

And it is just this lack of fundamental meanings, essential definitions, and connections between phenomena that allows those in power to keep using the "nobody could have predicted ploy" for prolonged periods. That is, until enough voices break through through the cacophany, saying, "but it was predicted, years ago, and here it is in print and on tape." Then the popular media collectively stops and blinks for a few minutes. It then either goes on as before or amends the script, eg, now, after all this time, we're finally hearing the ramifications of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act being discussed.

Well duh.

[tama]

7. Bad case of myopia

caused by worshipping the corporate media. My advice to this writer: drop of the corporate media, tune into world wide web.

[burning rain]

8. Thomas Frank, Siegel's not.

^