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Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan
I'm with you. I'd add that this "folksy anti-intellectualism" is actually itself a species of relativism. It denies the value of knowing more, and of having more training--and privileges the reactions of the "gut" over those of the "brain." In other words it both proposes a total relativism of ideas ("even though I know nothing, my ideas are just as good as those of people smarter and more educated than me") it also proposes a kind of nihilism of spirit ("my convictions are de facto true because I say so, and need not stand up to any rational or empirical test whatsover").
It's a dangerous combination. You look at "tea party" types, who are willing to heckle and deride grieving mothers in order to stand up for insurance companies... and you realize that the danger here isn't that their convictions are too strong. It's that their conviction is in the service of nothing. It's complete moral emptiness and blackness--and it is very scary.
http://beltwayblips.dailyradar.com/v...arty-patriots/
I mean, we can say that these people are idiots. But we can't dismiss them as idiots, because their ideology leads in a direction that we must not go. And that has nothing to do with conservatism vs. liberalism--it has to do with the conviction that we can build a greater polity together vs. the conviction that this world is an illusion, and most of its inhabitants are doomed infidels anyway, so callous cruelty and total nihilism become options in a way that they wouldn't otherwise. |
We live in very confusing times. Or perhaps we just live in times that lack a certain order. Personally, I, most like yourself, tend to look at the spirit of things and become rather depressed when the spirit of our age is so completely mysterious.
We should not be so bold to suggest that the visions of society that we hold will result in the type of future we desire. We lack a certain public freedom that a healthy democracy used to urgently require. As my favourite author, Saul Bellow said in ... "Herzog" I believe... us moderns have radically expanded the private freedom, without creating anything meaningful to fulfill it with. Thus, the majority of us tend to fill our lives up with ourselves. Our own opinions and ideas are often too smug to allow for any sort of self-awareness and thus, we have no real means to conduct meaningful friendship or community with anyone of our fellow citizens.
Politics is regime-building and humans are regime-building machines. When our own personal views of what the polity should be are vocalized, they become opinions and thus, inevitably collide with other's opinions, becoming politics. The problem is that we have no higher conduct with which to conduct our debates anymore. Allan Bloom, another of my favourite writers, believed that what we really were missing from our souls was longing or "eros." We do not desire any sort of public outcome, but merely the satisfaction of seeing our own meager ideas come to fruition.
I guess we have a certain crudity to these modern times, but we also have a wonderful freedom. Even though we lack order, we have the space to conduct our affairs the way we see fit. I dedicate myself, as a student and writer, to fighting this war of ideas with the relativists and the radicals, from both right and left, who seek to supplant any good that remains in our culture with the nihilism of egalitarianism. We have beautiful things that lie embedded in our culture, they still retain their power to dazzle and sweep away those who come into contact with them.