Anti Intellectualism is Killing America
POSTED BY: Magonsdaughter
UPDATED: Monday, July 13, 2026 01:26
VIEWED: 26774
PAGE 12 of 21
Quote:JO753 is on your birth certificate, driver's license, and passport? Hoookaaay...
JOWHOEVERYOUARE- SIGNY
I go by my real name here and everywhere on the web.
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That freeks you out, duznt it?
Not really. First of all, I'm not sure that I believe you. And even if you DID officially change your name from whatever it was before to "JO753" ... well, I guess it takes all kinds of people. Not sure of the motivation behind it but, yanno, whatever. It's your name, not mine!
Quote:In general, I support the idea of phonetic English. I've dabbled in creating my own. Others have their versions. I personally think that the closer you can come to the current 26-letter alphabet and letter-combinations that people are already familiar with, you will have greater acceptance and faster transition. But that's just me.
I think you know that in general I support the idea of phonetic English.- SIGNY
Youv sed so several timez, yet dont seem to like the actual solution. Wun uv the 1st thingz I learned wen I joined the Saundspel Yahoo group (a spelling reform forum) iz that everybody haz their own ideaz about wut to do and everybody else iz rong. 'Everybody wants to be a General, nobody wants to be a soldier' iz a saying thats been around the English spelling reform community forever.
Quote:I general, I support phonetic English. I'm not committed to any particular system, I feel there are larger problems to deal with. But, as a general idea, I think it's a good one.
Another thing I learned iz that alot uv pro-reform peepl are 'dabblerz' who spend very little time actually thinking thru the issue. The vast majority think that just the most obvious clunkerz need to be chanjed (the ough junk) and sum very minor % uv them go on to making a system. 99.9% uv them kum up with a regularization skeem thats virtually identical to a million other standard 26 letter Roman alfubet rule based comprimize systemz.
Quote:I general, I support the idea of phonetic English. I'm not a fighter for the cause, or for any particular system. You have my lukewarm support.
You are in the majority group.
Quote:No, I never have, I never claimed I did, and in fact I said the opposite: I have NOT read the site
There are two objections which make sense to me that you haven't addressed, one of which MAGONS herself brought up.
The first is that we will lose the subconscious knowledge of French, Latin, Greek, and German, and all of he other polyglot languages that English consists of.
The second (MAGON'S and others') is that managing to solve the spelling of the various accents will be quite difficult, and that forcing everyone to spell "phonetically" (Maybe not THEIR phonetics) will cause the loss of English-speaking culture, and force conformity. As an Ozzie, I think MAGON'S has a point.- SIGNY
You did partisipate in M52Nickerson'z anti-nooalf topic, so you shoud know that your claimz are false. I think you hav also claimed to hav read the entire Nooalf site,
Quote:Be a dear and condense their solution here.
so shoud know that thoze objectionz are adressed thuroly there.
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:I personally think that the closer you can come to the current 26-letter alphabet and letter-combinations that people are already familiar with, you will have greater acceptance and faster transition. But that's just me.
You and about 95% uv reformerz. Its kinda funny, but trajik - look at the American Literacy Council'z system. Several timez a yir, sumwun will join the Saundspel group after completing their dictionary uv reformed English in their system. They will spend several months trying to convins everybody why theirz iz better than the functionally indistinguishable ALC system and all the other clonez that can be found going back to the 1800z. Usually they fade away. Sum die hardz will start cranking out new systemz.
The trajidy iz all the work they do to repeat wuts been dun so many timez befor, all along claiming to be advocates uv reform, yet unwilling to spend a minit doing anything to help the cauze.
If you want to avoid ending up like them, don't waste any more time thinking about your appeazment 'sistum'.
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...I feel there are larger problems to deal with
A popular excuse to avoid doing anything.
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You have my lukewarm support.
xanks. Better than nothing.
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No, I never have, I never claimed I did, and in fact I said the opposite: I have NOT read the site
Sorry. Cant keep trak uv everything about everybody.
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Be a dear and condense their solution here.
The plain text pajez are the condensed version. A 5 minit read.
http://www.nooalf.com/plaintext.htm
(I know this wuz a waste uv time, but I keep getting accuzed uv ignoring posts)
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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.nooalf.com
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, I had to look up "intellectualism" ...
which took me to "intellectual"...
of or relating to the intellect or its use
developed or chiefly guided by the intellect rather than by emotion or experience : rational
requiring use of the intellect
given to study, reflection, and speculation
engaged in activity requiring the creative use of the intellect
and "intellect" ....
the power of knowing as distinguished from the power to feel and to will : the capacity for knowledge
the capacity for rational or intelligent thought especially when highly developed
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The crucial point seems to be "thought" ... as opposed to "emotion", "will", or "experience". How does this mesh with the original article, and with Americans specifically?
Cognitive cerebral processing. Critical logical thinking, without bias or diversion. Cold rational thought is intellectual, while hot-blooded is emotional.
Experience is perception, but needed for evolutionary survival. Otherwise failing to have prejudice and discrimination will allow you to see that pretty fluffy soft lion on the street and go over to pet the nice kittt....
Will is ego, not rational or reason.
Whales are one of the largest creatures on the planet.
Elephants are one of the largest on land.
Giraffes are the tallest.
Cheetahs are the fastest.
Lions are most ferocious, perhaps the strongest claws.
Crocodiles have the strongest jaws.
Snakes and spiders are the most venomous.
Yet where humans walk on this world, they rule. It is because of our ability to think clearly, coldly, calculatingly, rationally, to reason and judge, decide with clarity. Emotion blinds the mind to reason, reducing a human and his strongest asset (mind, cerebrum) to merely another critter - yet some humans intentionally choose this path, make this choice, to degrade their thought process by intentionally infusing emotion to derail the logic process. Why?
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"yet dont seem to like the actual solution'
There are many solutions - yours isn't the only one. I've proposed using the symbols one finds at the bottom the dictionary. Signy believes in a more natural adaptation of current English. Other people in other places have made other proposals.
Why you think yours is the ONLY viable solution ... THE ACTUAL solution ... let me just say, you need to rethink that.
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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"Cold rational thought is intellectual"
It only pretends to be rational. But it's driven by the same emotional evaluations and assumptions, often so deeply ingrained people don't even know they're there. Purely rational thought has no preferred endpoint or aim.
Deciding to pet the kitty is irrational, as is fearing the lion.
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
There are many solutions - yours isn't the only one.
Youre telling me?
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I've proposed using the symbols one finds at the bottom the dictionary.
A very common idea. Try typing it and riting it by hand.
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Why you think yours is the ONLY viable solution ... THE ACTUAL solution ... let me just say, you need to rethink that.
Its not the only viable solution, its just the best uv the few that are.
2nd best iz Unifon. I assume you are familiar with it.
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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.nooalf.com
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Herez an example uv the standard issue linguisticly trained spelling reformer:
http://dedalvs.conlang.org/petersonian.html
This fellow created the Dothraki languaj for Game Uv Thronez.
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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.nooalf.com
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So, here is the original article, edited to highlight what the author thinks is "anti-intellectualism" -or, conversely, "intellectualism".
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... key underlying pathology: anti-intellectualism.
exaltation of ignorance
culture of ignorance
critical thinking
aversion to reason
informed, engaged, and rationally thinking public
motivated by fear, susceptible to tribalism and simplistic explanations, incapable of emotional maturity, and prone to violent solutions
little to do with intelligence
rejection of critical thinking or, conversely, the glorification of the emotional and irrational
violent crime ... incarceration rate ... [low] education and scientific literacy
fundamentalist religion
Corporate influence
not thinking critically
shaping life around materialism and consumption [AND INDIVIDUALISM- SIGNY].
conformity and passive acceptance of institutional dominance.
Well, the author kind of wobbles back and forth a bit between the definition of "anti-intellectualism" as "ignorance" or "lack of rational, critical thinking; thought not driven by emotion or will". Eventually, though, he emphasizes the latter definition. So his thesis about "anti-intellectualism" is mostly consistent with the dictionary definition of the word.
And I agree with ALMOST everything he says. When an economic/political/social system exists where there are HUGE discrepancies in power, where the 0.00001% determine everything of importance and the 99.99999% have no say (except in the most trivial of matters, like what kind of toilet paper to purchase) the LAST thing "the powers that be" can tolerate is a population which decides to look up and see who is pulling the strings.
But I'm not sure that anti-intellectualism is a particular feature of the USA. Since most modern economies are very large, and most modern economies have very large differences in power, most rulers probably depend on "anti-intellectualism" and an emotion-based belief system of SOME sort to remain in power.
It's possible, for example, that the problem with the AMERICAN brand of anti-intellectualism is not that Americans have more beliefs than other nations, but that specific American beliefs are particularly pernicious and self-destructive. For example, in America, violent crime and gun deaths are vastly higher than in other developed nations. At the same time, many people believe that incarceration and gun ownership are viable solutions to crime.
These are all SYMPTOMS of an underlying belief, and that belief is that violence is the answer to ... well, everything ... from bad schools to poverty to mental illness. You won't solve the problem of violence by restricting people's ownership of guns, you have to change a whole attitude. When people are ready to give up their guns, that will be an indication of a sea-change in an American belief system. So the belief in violence as a cure for all of society's - and the world's - ills is a one of those pernicious beliefs. Another is "individualism" ... the belief that people should have no connection to each other except through the marketplace.
By contrast, while Europeans are much more practical about crime and violence, they have their own pernicious beliefs about the viability of democracy while under the rule of unelected bank technocrats/ the Euro. This has led to the waterboarding of Greece and the the suppression of southern European economies.
Greeks, meanwhile, believed that they could stay in the Euro and avoid austerity (cake-and-eat-it-too), not understanding that Germany and the other creditor nations were (are) seeking to assert total dominance. Northern European creditor nations - nations which seek to amass currency by being net exporters- fail to realize that NOT EVERYBODY can be a net exporter (It's a mathematical impossibility; when there are net exporters there are also net importers; a world of "net exporters" should beg t
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Ted Turner sed "Life iz a game. Money iz how we keep score." But can you juj countryz by how rich they are in a competativ envirement?
You haf to wonder how well America and other English speaking nationz woud be doing if they werent collectively blowing a trillion per yir bekuz uv a louzy orthografy.
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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.nooalf.com
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Humans are probably not superior to other animals in reasoning skills.
What we have, which they don't, is persistent abstract language. That language is like an overarching, collective hive-mind, that directly forms or influences nearly every experience, independent of individuals.
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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