I've always found it to be the case that most working-class people (not ALL, but most) aren't put off by highly intelligent/educated people... provided said intelligent/educated people aren't also sticking their noses in the air and pretending to be better than everyone else. The only ones who are put off by intelligence and education regardless of other factors are religious conservatives.

This stands in sharp contrast to most intelligentsia. If you don't stick your nose in the air and pretend to be better than everyone else, you are swiftly turned into a pariah. They don't judge based on intelligence, educational level, or the lack thereof. What they're really looking for is unthinking subservience to the ideas of virtually any so-called "expert" that should chance by, coupled with displays of condescension and contempt towards anyone who has the nerve to judge an idea based on their own knowledge and experience. This is the essential paradox of the intelligentsia... the more you use your brain, the more you engage your intelligence, the more apt they are to dismiss you as being "trashy" or otherwise beneath them. The reaction to someone who dares to differ from the "expert" publicly is contempt, and the reaction to someone who makes sound arguments that the so-called "expert" cannot successfully refute is outright hatred.

When one refuses to play along with their seemingly endless panoply of "experts", one is effectively refusing to be part of white upper middle class hegemony. After all, if "experts" are not automatically lauded for their ideas, sound or otherwise, what is to prevent the erosion of privilege typically accorded to intelligensia? Their whole lives, they've nodded and went along with some of the most ridiculous BS you can imagine, simply to be part of the group and get that little ego stroke of being considered "superior"... and if you have the nerve to point out that the Emperor has no clothes, you're threatening to take all of that away. Predictably, the social reaction to such behavior is extreme hostility.

"If there's any hope at all, it lies with the proles." I remember reading that many years ago, in Orwell's 1984. Then as now, he was right. The only thing crippling the proles is organized religion. (The adherence to organized religion serves a psychosocial function which is quite similar to the function of "experts" for the white upper-middle class. It prevents thinking and stifles honest inquiry, while providing a mechanism to declare oneself "superior" to others.)

The shackles of organized religion seem to be weakening in our society, but the tyranny of the so-called "expert" and the self-appointed "guardian of the public good" is strong as ever. From this, is it not reasonable to assume that the proles are going to "dig out" from under their thought-control mechanisms first?

I've always found it to be the case that most working-class people (not ALL, but most) aren't put off by highly intelligent/educated people... provided said intelligent/educated people aren't also sticking their noses in the air and pretending to be better than everyone else.

My interpretation is somewhat different. I think most working-class people aren't put off by "elites" (a term I don't like but which seems to be the current shorthand for anyone who went to college and is professionally successul) provided said elites aren't doing anything the proles <i>perceive</i> as sticking their noses in the air.

The egg-white omlettes, arugula at Whole Foods and so forth are a good example. We don't eat those things instead of stopping off at the Waffle House to show how elite we are. We eat them because we have sedentary desk jobs and our cholesterol and blood pressure are high and we don't want to die.

As for the rest of your post, regarding respect for experts, I see some of that, but you're mostly wrong.

Experts do in fact exist. Even without quotation marks. People who, you know, have the necessary training and years of experience in complicated fields. If you're going to have a heart bypass, it would be a good idea to go to an expert.

Very often when I hear someone dismissing an expert, they are simply mistaken. As an extreme example, consider the creationists. These people, though they live their whole lives in a modern world created by science, have such contempt for scientists that it would be hilarious if it were not so tragic (and if they were not trying to feed their ignorance to other people's children in the public schools). They actually think scientists are so stupid that they could overlook very basic "evidence."

Some of them can make very pseudo-sophisticated arguments against evolution. It's utter piffle, of course, but they believe that they are, in your words, making sound arguments that the experts cannot refute. And their audience believes the same thing.

Reliance on experts (perhaps a better word is "specialists") is a necessary condition in a world that has grown so complex. I have a scientific background, so I can see for myself that the arguments against evolution range from the confused to the deeply flawed, and that the evidence for human-generated climate change, while perhaps not 100% conclusive, is actually fairly compelling. I still have to rely on specialists for the details, however. And, say, a smart lawyer with no scientific background, would be even more dependant on experts. But what is the alternative? Giving equal weight to the opinions of NASA and flat-earthers?

Finally, regarding "If there's any hope at all, it lies with the proles," I think this is the most wrongheaded thing in the post.

I'd argue that science, carried out by "experts," is and always has been the hope of mankind. But lets forget that for the time being.

What is the first thing a dictator does when he takes over? He eliminates the intelligentsia. Stalin did it. Pol Pot did it. Hitler. Mao. They all do it. Without the educated classes, the rest are sheep.

Who among the white population of the U.S. in the fifties and sixties supported the civil rights struggle? Was it the southern good ol' boys with their police dogs and fire hoses and nooses? No, within the white population it was a movement of the intelligentsia. And within the black community it was very much an intelligentsia-led movement.

Basically I find the anti-intellectual strain of your post difficult to comprehend or sympathize with. It sounds like right-wing talk radio. People are not, in fact, made morally superior, or superior in any other way, by having a limited formal education. There's nothing wrong with people who work in factories or on farms or as fry cooks or doormen. But this "salt of the earth" crap is tiresome and, dare I say it, intellectually bankrupt.

Evolution is easily observed in the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. If organized religion was a thing of the past in this nation (dare to dream), would anyone doubt evolution? (And I'm not even going into the huge numbers of fossils which are easily visible to passersby in certain areas of the country, which only point to the same conclusion.) Do you need a degree from an ivy-league university to recognize evolution, or do you just need eyes, and a mind capable of basic reasoning?

Likewise, your comments on a flat earth. The notion of the earth being flat is a ridiculous supposition to anyone who has travelled by plane, anyone who has visited the seashore, and anyone who has watched an eclipse. Again, do you need a degree from an ivy-league university to understand that the earth is not flat, or do you just need eyes, and a mind that is capable of basic reasoning? It's actually quite appalling the reliance that most upper middle-class people have for experts, when the truth is plainly evident before their eyes. The curvature of the earth is quite evident on a plane, or at the seacoast. No matter how far you go in a plane, you never come to an "edge of the world", and the shadow cast by the earth on the moon in a lunar eclipse is quite obviously a ROUND one. (That it is, in fact, the shadow of the earth on the moon is plainly evident by the fact that lunar eclipses only take place when the moon is FULL, and thereby directly opposite the sun, from the perspective of the earth. You can watch the motions of the moon and sun relative to the earth, and the effects this has on the moon's phase, without giving Harvard a dime.)

Where will the madness end? We have bookstores crammed to bursting with self-help books on such topics as how to make friends, how to get toddlers to stop sucking their thumbs, how to raise a well-behaved child, how to get along with your spouse, and other such topics. Furthermore, these books sell like hotcakes... apparently, we just can't get enough of them. Do we truly need such a massive volume of advice on such simple, everyday matters? Barring a pervasive developmental disorder such as Autism, how can someone attain the age of majority in this nation and have no idea of how to make a friend? How can someone successfully complete childhood without observing (from both their own upbringing and those of other children they knew) what sort of upbringings lead to positive outcomes? How can we have watched our own parents (and the parents of other children) interact with one another, and still be absolutely clueless as to what sort of behaviors are functional within a marriage, and which are not? And who didn't know at least one habitual thumb-sucker -- perhaps a younger sibling, or the younger sibling of a friend -- who was finally broken of the habit by either having red pepper put on his/her thumbs, or having his/her thumbnails painted with that nasty-tasting nail polish which is normally sold to discourage nail-biting?

But no... we mustn't rely on our own knowledge, reasoning, or experience of the world. That's just gauche and low-class. We must sit on our hands and wait until some stuffed shirt comes along to tell us what to do, and we must treat whatever 'pearls of wisdom' they deign to offer as if they were more precious than gold, no matter how contradictory to evidence, experience, or logic they are, and no matter how little sense they make. No matter how ineffective or even outright harmful the proposed "solution" turns out to be, abandoning it is just trashy... at least until another expert comes along and tells us how to do it differently. Then, we can watch the two experts duke it out, providing a spectacle which is pretty much the upper-middle class equivalent of pro wrestling. :P

At least the proles still try to think.

I can't help but be reminded of another novel, The Time Machine, by H.G Wells. The Eloi (descendants of the upper class) were pretty, but they were also weak, unbelievably stupid, useless, and utterly lacking in any redeeming virtue whatsoever save beauty. The Morlocks were descendants of the working class, and had been largely spared the intellectual degeneration that had overtaken the Eloi because the Morlocks were responsible for running the machinery of their subterranean world, and troubleshooting it when it broke down. In other words, they had to continually devise and apply logical solutions to everyday problems, whereas the Eloi were spared even being inconvenienced by everyday problems, let alone actually having to solve any. On top of that, the Morlocks were still physically robust, because they were still accustomed to occasionally putting in an honest day's work. The Morlocks enslaved the Eloi. Still preferring a subterranean existence they did not conquer the surface world per se, but lived underground and kept the Eloi much as farmers today keep cattle. The aboveground world was one gigantic cow pasture, as far as the Morlocks were concerned.

I can't help but see the echoes of that novel in our society today. When I look at the upper middle-class today... what do I see? Intellectual cripples who consider thinking for one's self to be so ill-bred as to be tantamount to defecating in an elevator. Disgustingly thin, frail, sickly women whose collarbones jut forth like the prow of a ship. Exercise nuts who, in spite of the yuppie health club they might religiously attend, have relatively little physical strength and less stamina than even an average member of the working class. People who are so well-insulated from the everyday problems in the real world that they can't even successfully formulate the questions, let alone come up with good answers.

Ah well... I've always been very easily sunburnt. If my distant descendants also carry that trait, for them to live underground might not be such a bad deal after all.... ;)

All joking aside, the truly tragic thing is that we've let it happen. Instead of demanding that our schools merely give students the facts while encouraging the students to make of the facts whatever they will, we have allowed the educational system to turn to the production of intellectual lemmings. :/

maroci:

Finally, regarding "If there's any hope at all, it lies with the proles," I think this is the most wrongheaded thing in the post.

I'd argue that science, carried out by "experts," is and always has been the hope of mankind. But lets forget that for the time being.

What is the first thing a dictator does when he takes over? He eliminates the intelligentsia. Stalin did it. Pol Pot did it. Hitler. Mao. They all do it. Without the educated classes, the rest are sheep.

Who among the white population of the U.S. in the fifties and sixties supported the civil rights struggle? Was it the southern good ol' boys with their police dogs and fire hoses and nooses? No, within the white population it was a movement of the intelligentsia. And within the black community it was very much an intelligentsia-led movement.

Basically I find the anti-intellectual strain of your post difficult to comprehend or sympathize with. It sounds like right-wing talk radio. People are not, in fact, made morally superior, or superior in any other way, by having a limited formal education. There's nothing wrong with people who work in factories or on farms or as fry cooks or doormen. But this "salt of the earth" crap is tiresome and, dare I say it, intellectually bankrupt.

Would you like to know the real reason why they eliminate the intelligentsia? I was a graduate student in psychology when the 9/11 attacks occurred, and I can tell you why. (Yes! You're talking to a highly educated person with a solidly middle class upbringing! Surprise, surprise. Even more amazingly, a teacher's brat, whose father started as an elementary school teacher in a large Northern city, rose through the ranks, and finally held a post as director of research and evaluation for the entire school system before he finally retired. Sometimes it seems to me that alone amongst the middle class, it's only the children of teachers who are spared this crippling refusal to think that holds the rest of the class in such an iron grip.)

A few years before 9/11, I recall learning of the loyalty oaths that American university faculty were often forced to take during WWII. Nothing major or extreme, merely to the effect that the professors would not support the Nazis, nor reveal to the Nazis any secrets (scientific or otherwise) which would aid the Nazis. Many balked, citing academic freedom and otherwise raising hell about it. Many more complained... they saw this as a de facto questioning of their loyalty.

Why did the government feel the need to do this? The answer which is generally given is that the professors were so valuable that if one of them defected to the Nazi cause, it stood to cause far more damage to the Allies than if an ordinary American did. On the face of it, this argument is sound. After all, if an American physics prof who was working on new, cutting-edge field weaponry for the United States government (or worse, the atomic bomb) had defected to the Nazis, that would have been extremely damaging to the Allied cause.

However, on further examination, this explanation simply doesn't hold water. It wasn't just the professors of chemistry, physics, engineering, and other fields which were of critical importance to the Allied war machine who were encouraged to sign. It was all faculty, including instructors in fields of expertise which would have had no military use whatsoever (home economics, art, etc.) From this, it is apparent that the notion of the professors being more valuable to the war was largely an excuse. (Granted, it was an ego-affirming excuse for the academic community, but an excuse just the same.) Were intelligentsia truly more apt to feel insufficient loyalty to their nation, then? Apparently, that had been the assumption, but on what grounds?

This question, like so many others, continued to simmer on the back burners of my mind in years to come.

On a fateful day in September 2001, I learned the answer. I'll never forget the reaction of most of the professors and the other graduate students. Not just in the psychology department, but in other departments, as well. I'll never forget, not for as long as I live. :(

Strange, isn't it? If a couple dozen tribesmen are killed in some godforsaken banana republic that even a professional geographer can only find on a map best try out of three, this merits humanistic outrage, weeks of discussion, and exhaustively detailed dissections of history, global politics, and human nature.

When it's raining body parts in one of our nation's largest cities, it apparently merited little but snide remarks, a most appalling indifference, and self-righteous contempt directed toward anyone who was not warped enough to share that indifference. What point was there in speaking of all the psychological theory that you could see in action, in terms of how the country (particularly the working class) was banding together? What point was there in even trying to explain the feelings, the actions, or the evolutionary underpinnings of either to a group of people who not only could not make the same logical leaps, but who apparently had more affection for the peoples, cultures, and values of just about any country on the globe than they did for their own?

Then again, what else can you expect of irreparably damaged individuals who have dedicated their lives to taking what virtually any normal person instinctively understands, and putting it into a fine, coldly intellectualized language they can accept?

Well, sort of accept.

That is, when they bother to notice, and when they aren't too busy feeling alienated because they're not even making an effort to get along with the larger society?

Or ranting, because the larger society understandably tends to return the favor? :P

I was fortunate enough to not lose family members in the attack, but I lost something else. I lost all of what little remaining faith I had, in both "experts" and in the academic community as a whole.

Yes, there is evidence to suggest that we were the ones who trained Osama bin Laden, years before 9/11. Yes, our country has a long and colorful history of ill-conceived foreign policy in the Middle East. These things are certainly true.

It's also quite true that we've been the lapdog of a foreign theocracy ever since it was founded (Israel), and that little factoid certainly doesn't gain us any points with most of the Middle East, either. Of course, who would dare to even mention that, in the hallowed halls of academia? :P

In any case, knowing these things will not miraculously reconstruct buildings from rubble, or raise the dead. It will not restore even one person to life, nor will it heal even one person who was burnt beyond recognition. It will not comfort one grieving widow, provide needed blood to even one injured person, or ease the burden of even one bereaved family. And I watched, as working-class people -- who had a much deeper understanding of the issue -- line up all over the nation, to give blood. I watched them grieve, because they cared about not "the US", but us... We, the People. They had genuine feelings for their lost, injured, and grief-striken countrymen. I watched them demand Osama's head on a pike for this outrage, and shared their feelings in full measure.

What about the remainder of academia? Very, very few responded at all appropriately to the attack. Most of them just sat on their collective hands, while clucking their tongues and rolling their eyes disapprovingly at the rest of the country.

It was then that I understood the loyalty oath of WWII, and moreover, why it had been felt to be necessary. Disjointed, disconnected, and disaffected, with very little natural loyalty or fellow-feeling, and a profoundly disturbing lack of understanding of their fellow human beings. You speak of bankruptcy? This was intellectual and moral bankruptcy... even a complete bankruptcy of their basic humanity. Just ... just an ineffectual, inadequate, and hopelessly confused mass, frantically trying to substitute books for knowledge, empty words for learning, and blind, unthinking conformity to their particular subculture with superiority. My wordsmithing cannot even come close to describing the depth of my horror.

Where is bin Laden now? Damned if we know. He could be strolling down a tropical beach somewhere with a leggy blonde on each arm, and laughing at us all. We still wouldn't know. Why are we even in Iraq, when Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with it? With that completely illogical action, I fear we have missed our chance at bin Laden, a chance that might well never come again. :(

Uh, no.

I'm sorry that the reaction on whatever shithole campus you're on was what it was, if in fact that was the case. Somehow I doubt it. I saw absolutely nothing like that in either of the major campuses (UNC, Duke) that I was affiliated with at the time. And aside from one or two freak cases that the media like to trot out, I have seen little evidence of anything like what you describe elsewhere either.

What is interesting is that you yourself point out some nuances of the radical muslim situation that academics and other elites have pointed out and consider important. These are not things you are likely to hear much about on bubba-oriented talk radio. They are not the party line from the government. Yet somehow they are evidence of conformity among intellectuals. I'd suggest that it's mainly a matter of intellectuals having the intellectual resources to make connections that others might not. This is the reason why they are dangerous to dictators, or to bullshitters like the Bush administration.

Really, your original post just sounded wrongheaded. Now you're starting to sound a bit unhinged.

Where is bin Laden now? Damned if we know. He could be strolling down a tropical beach somewhere with a leggy blonde on each arm, and laughing at us all. We still wouldn't know. Why are we even in Iraq, when Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with it? With that completely illogical action, I fear we have missed our chance at bin Laden, a chance that might well never come again.

This last paragraph, which I agree with, is interesting in that it is so disconnected from the rest of your logic.

Tell me: if you had surveyed the Bubbas and the college professors at the time of the Iraq invasion and asked them if Iraq was connected to 9/11, which group do you think would have overwhelmingly given the correct answer, and which on the incorrect one? Which group fell in line like sheep, bought the government line and supported this clusterfuck? I know the answer and so do you.

Ellistra, I am an academic. I card carrying member of the intelligentsia. I have the publications, the worthless seats on committees, and the fancy sashes to prove it all. And ... I couldn't agree with you more. I recently watched one of my students get savaged by the discipline committee of our school, and I have very rarely been so angry. The members of that committee forgot what it is to be human.

This student is a brilliant researcher, compassionate, and a dedicated friend. He has also experienced two years which any normal human being would cringe at. In the first, his wife left him and spent the better part of six months savaging his personal life and reputation. He withdrew from classes in deep depression. As a friend, I spent countless hours trying to tell him that it would be alright and time would help ease the pain (though it would probably never erase it completely). In the second, his father was diagnosed with cancer. Unfortunately, his grades were not spectacular in either year. What did the committee choose to do? Expel him for substandard academic performance with no warning or even much of an explanation. He failed one class in both years, though he was marginal in several others.

I've been through my rough spots (one in graduate school when my wife had a miscarriage and a second in residency when my father had a stroke). I was fit to be tied for weeks. Just as this student experienced, I not only received no sympathy or support, but active derision by colleagues and mentors for allowing my work to fall behind. I've known for some time that academic training builds the ego at the expense of humanity, but this event made me physically ill (and turns my stomach to think of it now).

While I would like to say (as others have) that your categorization of academics is inaccurate and unfair, I cannot. You have said it better than I could say it myself.

I am not in academia nor will I ever be. My grandfather was a townie at Philips Andover went to Harvard and ended up as a Montanan farmer so I have inherited a strong Yankee/Western skepticism of the intelligensia. I am writing this post to address the fallacy of assigning the relevance of the expertise of a surgeon to the world of experts at large. This is the fallacy of composition, specifically you are assigning the property of competence of the practicing expert to the larger world of experts. Many experts indulge in theorizing that that is either obviously true to anyone without a graduate degree or is unfalsifiable. There is no way to know if these experts are competent or not. It is clear that they are useless to anyone. That is not to say that all academics fall under this characterization. I had some professors who were searching for truth in an unaffected genuine way. They were not afraid to be wrong. That being said, I would not say that they were the majority.