Gerald Maclennon's Blog - Posts Tagged "anti-intellectualism"
America's New Age of Anti-Reason
This short article by one Ray Williams seized my attention in the year 2014. In it, he explains the very real dangers of a nation being ruled by social media mentality. I believe Willams has hit the proverbial nail on the head. Ergo... I place it on my blog
We're creating a nation of dummies... angry dummies who feel they have the right, the authority and the need not only to comment on everything, but to make sure their voice is heard above the rest, and to drag down any opposing views through personal attacks, loud repetition and confrontation.
Bill Keller, writing in the New York Times argues that the anti-intellectual elitism is not an elitism of wisdom, education, experience or knowledge. The new elite are the angry social media posters, those who can shout loudest and more often, a clique of bullies and malcontents baying together like dogs cornering a fox. Too often it's a combined elite of the anti-intellectuals not those who can voice the most cogent, most coherent response.
Together they foment a rabid culture of anti-rationalism where every fact is suspect; every rational thought is the enemy; where critical thinking is a tool of the devil.
Keller also notes that the herd mentality takes over online; the anti-intellectuals become the metaphorical equivalent of an angry lynch mob when anyone either challenges one of the mob beliefs or posts anything outside the mob's self-limiting set of values.
This growing mob of imbeciles accepts without questioning, believes without weighing the choices, joins the pack because in a culture where convenience rules, real individualism is "too much hard work"... thinking takes too much time. It gets in the way of the immediacy of social media... of the online experience.
-- from an article by Ray Williams, Psychology Today, June 2014
We're creating a nation of dummies... angry dummies who feel they have the right, the authority and the need not only to comment on everything, but to make sure their voice is heard above the rest, and to drag down any opposing views through personal attacks, loud repetition and confrontation.
Bill Keller, writing in the New York Times argues that the anti-intellectual elitism is not an elitism of wisdom, education, experience or knowledge. The new elite are the angry social media posters, those who can shout loudest and more often, a clique of bullies and malcontents baying together like dogs cornering a fox. Too often it's a combined elite of the anti-intellectuals not those who can voice the most cogent, most coherent response.
Together they foment a rabid culture of anti-rationalism where every fact is suspect; every rational thought is the enemy; where critical thinking is a tool of the devil.
Keller also notes that the herd mentality takes over online; the anti-intellectuals become the metaphorical equivalent of an angry lynch mob when anyone either challenges one of the mob beliefs or posts anything outside the mob's self-limiting set of values.
This growing mob of imbeciles accepts without questioning, believes without weighing the choices, joins the pack because in a culture where convenience rules, real individualism is "too much hard work"... thinking takes too much time. It gets in the way of the immediacy of social media... of the online experience.
-- from an article by Ray Williams, Psychology Today, June 2014
