







Published by gavinjohnston67


Join the Conversation


  1. anti-intellectualism is what scares me the most. Here’s to the thinkers, the wool-gatherers, the dreamers, and anyone who believes that they can, through the pursuit of creativity and education, improve themselves, and the world in which we all live.

  2. As for the substantive point you make, the rabid anti-intellectualism that blights public discourse in the United States of America is particularly dangerous given its military might, the numbers and deployment of its armed forces overseas, and the rather weird but very popular and patriotic idea that the USA is the great defender of global ‘freedom,’ whatever that might mean. Any objection to this very weird idea is construed as ‘anti-American,’ ‘liberal-left,’ ‘communist,’ ‘queer,’ ‘godless,’ ‘Mexican’ (yes, I know, but some websites I have found are very clear on this notion), or dismissive of the great sacrifices made by the men and women of the USA’s armed forces. The irony is, any attempt to engage these issues in a measured, evidence-based debate is bound to fail because of the very irrationality of these ‘arguments.’ The anti-intellectuals in the US are quite simply employing the same tactics we all remember from the schoolyard – if you don’t like what you are hearing, stick your fingers in your ears, stamp your foot and scream.

  3. I am dismayed to report that the Anti Intellectualism of which this essay speaks is as rife in India too. In a faithful resonance of its American counterparts, the deranged Far Right, usually comprised of Hindu, Muslim and in some cases Christian anachronists bludgeon reason into submission at the altar of entirely fictitious notions of religious, cultural or social stability. To compound India’s tragedy, we have nearly no mainstream satire that can puncture this tragic buffoonery.

  4. Thank you for writing this, I have been having Twilight Zone moments when it seems like nobody else perceives this trend, which to me is frighteningly obvious. The connection with oppression that you point out at the end is of particular import.

    I have noticed a “democratization” of truth in recent years, I believe as a consequence of misunderstood relativism. In previous generations, moral and social “truths” were held to be absolute, and were even codified to abolish the notion of relativism or interpretation. People by and large felt they lived in a world governed by truths that were A) absolute and B) understood by them.

    The social and technological changes of 20th century were unkind to those absolutes. A lot of very smart people came along and pointed out, for example, that being written in an ancient book was no reason for something to be true, and in large degree succeeded in tearing down old absolutist dogmas. These people, for the most part, were probably not of the opinion that there could be no such thing as absolute fact, merely that ancient moral prescriptions did not belong to that class. However, to those lacking knowledge of scientific reasoning (or at least training in critical thinking), this distinction was lost. Suddenly there was no more right and wrong, everyone was entitled to an opinion, and most importantly, all opinions were equally valid.

    Fast forward to the present: on scientific issues such as evolution and climate change, the debate seems to have become a matter of attracting adherents rather than compiling evidence. What percentage of scientists say there is no climate change? The left says it is less than one percent, but the right says it could be as high as 20 percent, and growing! Very commonly when discussing evolution, I am referred to the number of “scientists” who do not believe in it as proof that it is a fiction. This is why I say the truth has become “democratized”: the mentality seems to be that we can all believe what we want, and if there are enough of us, we will win and it will become true. It is thus important to gain adherents for your view and take them away from your opposition, because otherwise you won’t win and your opinion will never be true. The role of evidence becomes one of convincing the skeptics rather than establishing truth or falsity.

    Fundamentally, this comes from the conflation of two different kinds of arguments. A non-evidentiary argument is an opinion. Obama is a buffoon. Fords suck. It’s a beautiful day. You can agree with it or disagree with it (or even agree slightly or emphatically), but that’s all. The only thing that will make it anything other than a matter of individual opinion is gathering evidence. The opinion may be held by more or fewer people, and normally we like it when more people agree with our opinions, but the statement is not capable of really being true or false.

    An evidence-based argument is unavoidably a statement of fact. It is completely non-relative. It is either right or wrong, and which it is depends on A) whether the evidence is valid and B) whether the evidence necessarily leads to the conclusion. It is not affected by whether it is believed by one person or one million people (or no people). Gravity has been found to exert a force on two bodies proportional to the product of their masses divided by the square of their distance. The angles of a closed three-sided figure add up to a semicircle. Thermodynamic systems always evolve such that overall entropy increases.

Leave a comment


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: