Anti Intellectualism is Killing America

POSTED BY: Magonsdaughter
UPDATED: Monday, July 13, 2026 01:26
VIEWED: 26774
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SIGNYM

Tuesday, June 23, 2015 11:39 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by G:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Lately, it was expressed right here on this board as
Quote:
So funny... oooooo French! Mon dieu! Such a heavy intellect!
[G: http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=59799&p=3]. I'm going to answer that "criticism", if it can be called such, with this:
Well, it's minor intellectualism. And do you have something against intellectualism? (I think the answer is "yes")

I have something against pretenders such as yourself. Nothing says 'wanna be' like dropping pithy phrases in French no less. I thought everyone was aware of that public gaff - guess not.

If speaking French was enough to make one an intellectual then Mitt Romney is your daddy.

First of all, "folie a deux" is, as far as I know, the ONLY term with which to describe a psychiatric condition. There's no substitute, unless you want to suggest one?

Secondly, I guess just I couldn't resist goading you (and THUGR) in a tribal sort of fashion. My bad.

So, aside from that tribal sort of poke, do you have anything ELSE to say about my post? I mean, I packed a lot of stuff in there, about how people are conditioned to into believing that their feelings matter, so that they can be manipulated by their feelings.

And how coddling their feelings leads to all sorts of dysfunctional activity, like buying shit they don't need, and avoiding topics they might really need to address?

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

SECOND

Tuesday, June 23, 2015 6:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by G:
You get to read about your supposed superiority and how right you are, Magons gets to read about all 300 million people in the US being stupid and dangerous. I don't see much real thought in either of those povs.

Folie à deux or "the theatric of two" is a psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from one individual to another. The same syndrome shared by more than two people may be called folie à trois, folie à quatre, or even folie à plusieurs ("madness of many"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_%C3%A0_deux

Before all the great presidents died, Andrew Jackson, the Man of the People in his presidential campaign, made his fortune trading slaves. Such a wholesome profession. Once in power, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, the Steal-their-land/Kill-them Act. The common man approved of Jackson, which is the key to understanding the common man's morality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Removal_Act
Jackson remains on the $20 bill, the most common bill from ATMs, which says everything about today's common man's morality where killing is highly moral so long as the US military does it for the common man. Call it America's folie à plusieurs.

A person cannot be diagnosed as being delusional if the belief in question is one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture. It is not clear at what point a delusional belief escapes from the folie à plusieurs diagnostic category and becomes legitimate because of the number of people holding it.

JO753

Tuesday, June 23, 2015 6:40 PM

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*(link is external)

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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.nooalf.com

SECOND

Tuesday, June 23, 2015 6:45 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:

*(link is external)

Did you mean to say:

Quote:
I coud only think that the article failed to get to the funda mental problem. Our society iz not very good at recognizing good ideas. If a bum on skid row figurez out the perfect solution to a problem, too bad, it will never rize up out uv the trash.
Meanwile , Kim Kardashian can repeat the standard issue propaganda & it will be in a billion earz within 24*hourz.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

JO753

Tuesday, June 23, 2015 7:25 PM

Ye, sumtin like dat!

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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.nooalf.com

SECOND

Tuesday, June 23, 2015 7:38 PM

Not anti-intellectualism, but white supremacy, better explains America:

www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2015/06/slaverys-long-shadow.html

Slavery’s Long Shadow by Paul Krugman in The New York Times:

My own understanding of the role of race in U.S. exceptionalism was largely shaped by two academic papers. The first, by the political scientist Larry Bartels, analyzed the move of the white working class away from Democrats, a move made famous in Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” Mr. Frank argued that working-class whites were being induced to vote against their own interests by the right’s exploitation of cultural issues. But Mr. Bartels showed that the working-class turn against Democrats wasn’t a national phenomenon — it was entirely restricted to the South, where whites turned overwhelmingly Republican after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Richard Nixon’s adoption of the so-called Southern strategy. And this party-switching, in turn, was what drove the rightward swing of American politics after 1980. Race made Reaganism possible. And to this day Southern whites overwhelmingly vote Republican, to the tune of 85 or even 90 percent in the deep South.

The second paper, by the economists Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser, and Bruce Sacerdote, was titled “Why Doesn’t the United States Have a European-style Welfare State?” Its authors — who are not, by the way, especially liberal — explored a number of hypotheses, but eventually concluded that race is central, because in America programs that help the needy are all too often seen as programs that help Those People: “Within the United States, race is the single most important predictor of support for welfare. America’s troubled race relations are clearly a major reason for the absence of an American welfare state.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SIGNYM

Tuesday, June 23, 2015 7:43 PM

SECOND

IMHO beliefs are NEVER legitimate unless they're backed up by some sort of consistency with reality. So I can believe all I want that malaria is caused by "bad air" (in the very name itself mal = bad, from the Latin , aria = air) but until I either kill those friggin' mosquitoes which xmit malaria, or kill the parasite which causes the disease, my "beliefs" are pretty much going to be DOA.

There are such things as ethics and a priori assumptions .... goals which we believe to be good, and assumptions which lay the foundation of all of our other reasoning ... which can never be proved, but the philosphical ideal (according to what I've been told) is to reduce as much as possible the scattered individual beliefs, and tie as much as possible together with some sort of logic. And I think that's where most people fail epically- they don't even recognize when one idea or ethic clashes violently and completely with another. If the common man (or the common woman) though thru their existence and predicaments once in a while, and developed an idea of where their real long-term interests lie, they wouldn't be bamboozled into doing so many things that benefited those who are manipulating them. But we, as a whole, remind me of the ladybug which is being controlled by the fungus+larva in its brain: tragically destined to sacrifice itself for something else.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

SECOND

Tuesday, June 23, 2015 10:04 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND

And I think that's where most people fail especially - they don't even recognize when one idea or ethic clashes violently and completely with another. If the common man (or the common woman) though thru their existence and predicaments once in a while, and developed an idea of where their real long-term interests lie, they wouldn't be bamboozled into doing so many things that benefited those who are manipulating them.

I really don't think that is what the problem is. More education would solve this anti-intellectualism but I think the real problem is: “It's better not to know.”

It's better not to be educated about evolution, unless you earn your pay as a biologist, then to know and alienate your Baptist relatives. It's better not to know about global warming, unless you're a climatologist, then to know and alienate your neighbors, the oil refinery workers (I live near Exxon-Mobile Baytown Texas).

Going back in history, it's better not to know how Pres. Andrew Jackson was tricking Indians out of their land, especially if you want to own that land cheaply. It's better not to know how the US Army moved the Indians out of Georgia and how many died. You want the land without feeling guilty. If you lived in a slave state, it's better not to know precisely how the 10% of families that owned slaves used the slaves. Look away or else you might have to do the nasty work the slave was doing. It you were in the 9% of families that owned a single slave, it was better not to know how the top 1% of families treated their slaves. If you were the top 1%, you really don't want to know how the slave-overseer in the next plantation disciplined slaves. Your overseer was kind, yet firm, with your slaves, you hoped.

Not knowing, call it anti-intellectualism, has always been very practical for weak people. They avoid some, not all, moral dilemmas and charitable giving by not knowing about problems. That leaves them with more leisure, money and land. Nearly everyone I know wants those things.

JO753

Tuesday, June 23, 2015 10:29 PM

Good post, Second.

Sumthing to think about.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.nooalf.com

THGRRI

Tuesday, June 23, 2015 10:55 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

SECOND

I really don't think that is what the problem is. More education would solve this anti-intellectualism but I think the real problem is: “It's better not to know.”

It's better not to be educated about evolution, unless you earn your pay as a biologist, then to know and alienate your Baptist relatives. It's better not to know about global warming, unless you're a climatologist, then to know and alienate your neighbors, the oil refinery workers (I live near Exxon-Mobile Baytown Texas).

Going back in history, it's better not to know how Pres. Andrew Jackson was tricking Indians out of their land, especially if you want to own that land cheaply. It's better not to know how the US Army moved the Indians out of Georgia and how many died. You want the land without feeling guilty. If you lived in a slave state, it's better not to know precisely how the 10% of families that owned slaves used the slaves. Look away or else you might have to do the nasty work the slave was doing. It you were in the 9% of families that owned a single slave, it was better not to know how the top 1% of families treated their slaves. If you were the top 1%, you really don't want to know how the slave-overseer in the next plantation disciplined slaves. Your overseer was kind, yet firm, with your slaves, you hoped.

Not knowing, call it anti-intellectualism, has always been very practical for weak people. They avoid some, not all, moral dilemmas and charitable giving by not knowing about problems. That leaves them with more leisure, money and land. Nearly everyone I know wants those things.

As we go forward into the furture society will answer questions concerning life, law, and human relationships, as we continue with the battle over lordship; who is lord, god or man? The theory of evolution has done far more than just reshape America's biology textbooks, it redefined the nature of the debate.

Most relationships start as either personal or professional and are emotional or intellectual. An emotional connection usually requires significant amounts of time spent with the person. Intellectual ideas are the order of the day. Philosophy and analytic disagreements, industry banter, current affairs, books.

Contact with the person has little bearing on quality of intellectual dialogue. Relationships evolve based on comfort levels and that’s where barriers and boundaries dictate outcomes. Ugly, pretty Black or White. We will continue to evolve but as we do we need to continue to eliminate the different ways we separate ourselves from each other. Hopefully religion will begin to disappear sooner rather than later. Skins colors are changing rapidly too a common middle tone and that will go far in washing away another barrier, although even among blacks lighter skin is preferred. Give it time folks. Look at all the changes in this country that have occurred in the last eighty years or so.

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