i will not glorify ignorance, mine or others'

When Did Being Smart Become a Political Deficit? | The New York Times, Letters to the Editor

As I read “Obama’s From Main St., Ain’t He?,” by Roger Cohen (column, The New York Times on the Web, Aug. 28), I started feeling a combination of rage and sorrow about the fact that being smart, articulate and well educated continues to be read as a deficit.

Let’s bring back the idea that being well read, cleverly witty, sometimes serious and sometimes silly, and maybe knowing a bit of art, music and history are all worthy goals.

Barack Obama is Main Street? Let’s hope so.

- Jane Nordli Jessep
Westport, Conn., Aug. 28, 2008

I remember a moment a few years ago when I was living in Oregon and at the tail end of a relationship with a man I loved. We were arguing about communication problems between us (I was wanting to be more open and upfront and expressive, he himself admitted he had serious issues with communicating himself openly). I asked him why he couldn't be honest with me about how he was feeling about us, why wasn't he trusting me when all I wanted was to help him, try to understand him.

He then lashed out - ad hominem - and accused me of being 'above him'. He said how could he even talk to me when I keep using fancy words and spewing out these ideas he has no knowledge of. Then he said that he saw himself as a simple man without much ambition but having me around made him feel really stupid and we were on two very different levels and he felt he couldn't reach me.

It was the very first time in my life I actually felt.....badly, about being so smart and learned in some way. Granted, I don't have a PhD, just a fine arts degree from a good art college, I don't consider myself some great intellectual who reads nothing but the classics, admires Hume and Russell, and looks down on those who have never even heard of Rakmaninov. I like that stuff, yes, but I don't begrudge others who don't like those, just as I don't begrudge them for not being into video games and roller coasters like I am.

But he did say such things to me, and I questioned myself, erroneously so. I thought, Is this what it's about? Having to dumb yourself down for someone because they don't know those fancy words you use? What he told me was one of the most hurtful things anyone has ever said to me. It hit me deeply.

< The Jefferson Library. in Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's crib.

Reading the op-ed piece above (and the original piece its writer was replying to) angered me. I realize that I should never, ever feel badly again for simply trying to better myself, exercise intellectual self improvement, learn new things, strive to be smarter, and use my knowledge pragmatically and constructively, not just for my own benefit but for the benefit of others.

The glorification of ignorance is one of the most profound fuck-ups in American society today. Our entire country, our culture, is infused with it to the point where many of us actually express pride in being ignorant! Well, fuck that! I am not ever going to stoop so low. I've worked my ass off trying to be a better version of me than yesterday, last month, last year. Why should I throw all my achievements away just to fit in? After all, everyone - EVERYONE - has the exact same chance as I to better themselves. The difference is that I took that chance.

If anything, the one thing I should be proud of is the fact that I brought myself up this high. I am the one who actually got off my ass and looked up strange new fancy words in the dictionary to know what they mean to be able to use them. I don't spoon feed myself garbage from mainstream media because I know better. Why should I be ashamed of that?

I think the ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus owned us when he stated:

Your life is too short and you have important things to do. Be discriminating about what images and ideas you permit into your mind. If you yourself don't chooose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest. It is the easiest thing in the world to slide imperceptibly into vulgarity. But there's no need for that to happen if you determine not to waste your time and attention on mindless pap.*

* As intepreted by Sharon Lebell in The Art Of Living: The Classical Manual On Virtue, Happiness, And Effectiveness (Harper-Collins 1994).

Related:
Dumbass: An American Standard? | a space alien
Stupid in America: Why your kids are probably dumber than Belgians | Reason Online

dumbass: an american standard?

^ 'Bush and the dumbing down of America', an excerpt from Susan Jacoby's hour long presentation in San Francisco recently. The full talk can be had here. | For iPhone users the full talk isn't available on YouTube, but two of its moments, 'The dumbing down of political language' and 'Computers: not making you smarter', are.

"Writer and scholar Susan Jacoby is sure to raise some hackles with The Age of American Unreason - an unsparing jeremiad that attacks the dumbing-down of the American public. Jacoby's area of study is US intellectual history, though she worries that the field is becoming a moot point in the face of our country's pervasive "infotainment" complex.

As politics get folded into entertainment, she argues, so too does morality become indistinguishable from consumerism. Though hardly the first to bemoan the pitfalls of mass culture, Jacoby's portrait of American anti-intellectualism is especially germane in the middle of an election year." - Booksmith, San Francisco

Philistine. I love the sound of that word and what it signifies. It's an ironizing word when used in a certain way, in this case to dismiss someone who chooses not to grow intellectually (yes, you can decide to be smarter than you were yesterday). At the risk of making myself look like an evil sonuvabitch with 'elitist' leanings, I confess to calling your average American dumbass a Philistine and he wouldn't know what that word meant, and you could accuse me, hence, of being anything but a Philistine. But think about it, there was one time that I myself did not know what that word meant. And guess what I did. I got off my dumb ass and actually looked it up in the dictionary. I grew better that day.

How many of us Americans today actually choose to get off our dumb asses to look up a new and intriguing word in the dictionary? How many of us Americans today actually choose to think, critically and analytically? How many of us Americans today actually choose to deeply and honestly examine the philosophical essence of our values instead of merely complaining out of our asses that our values are being attacked by terrorists and dictatorships?

^ These two guys were themselves elite - highly educated and independent thinkers and massively passionate about creating a world where everyone can be like them if they wanted. Are you, as a 'dumb American', gonna give them shit, too, the way you look down on other intellectuals and great thinkers? After all, these two guys co-conceived what would become two of the greatest manifestos in our history, The Declaration Of Independence and the United States Constitution. Yep, meet Thomas Paine (left) and Thomas Jefferson.

How many of us Americans would rather go shopping or watch Jerry Springer instead? Think about it. Or don't think at all and choose to be just another dumb American, one of many millions who have forgotten that the United States Of America was actually founded by a small group of amazingly bold and intelligent individuals, themselves learned men who chose to enlighten themselves and think critically and deeply. Where is the sin in that? Why should we as Americans toss aside the very principle on which our nation was built - the chance to be the very best, brightest, and highest quality that we can be for ourselves, of ourselves, and to set this down as a fundamental human right for everyone?

After all, is that not what Michelle and Barack Obama did? Is that not what my brother, a successful immigrant who earned his PhD in theoretical physics and now works for the JPL Labs at Caltech did? Why is being intelligent, individualistic, and elite looked down upon by so many of us Americans who would rather listen to trashy shock DJ's and obsess over what Britney or Lindsey did and be referred to as 'the lowest common denominator'?

^ Do forgive me, but his impressive knowledge of art and history and his incomparable experience in museums and culture aside.....FUCK, THIS GUY HAS ONE OF THE MOST GODDAMN DISTINCTLY SEXY VOICES EVER!! *faints*

I remember reading an interview with Philippe de Montebello in The New Yorker years ago. He has been the director of The Metropolitan Museum Of Art for the past 30 years and will be retiring at the end of this year. de Montebello was once confronted at a press conference for making the museum an elitist institution, why has he not reached out to, say, black kids in Harlem or the working class.

His reply was, in effect, "Yes, this is an elitist institution. And yet anyone can walk in off the street, go into the galleries, and learn about the world through the art. No one is stopping you at the door and telling you that you are too poor, too ethnic, too this or that. Everyone is welcome. The very moment you choose to enter The Metropolitan is the moment that you, yourself, become elite."