Untelligentsia


 


A few days ago, I found myself in the middle of a troll war. Online: it happens. And I was in the process of schooling one of them in elementary logic, after they made one of the most common logical fallacies. Something like "All the fighters in Iraq are not Al-Qaeda terrorists." "Oh, so you think Al-Qaeda doesn't exist. Now using bad logic on top of bad facts is nothing new on the right, and it's not restricted to anonymous trolls on comment boards. But It's a good question whether they lose bad logic because a) they know it irritates their opponents; b) they're just following Powerline and Michelle Malkin; or c) they really don't know any better. (they're not mutually exclusive, of course.) So, on the possibility of schooling these twerps, I gave them a textbook example of how the negation of 'all swans are white' is NOT 'all swans are non-white," but 'there exist swans that are not white.' And, mainly because it's easy on the Mac, I decided to give it to them in logical notation:

¬((∀x)px) = (∃x)¬px.

And the response I got was "you think your mathematics has anything to do with reality?"

I was surprised at how immensely angry that made me. It was the trifecta, to be sure: the troll couldn't tell the difference between symbolic logic and mathematics; it decided to mock it anyway; and it derided learning in general, all while it was telling us how stupid and incapable of thought we liberals were. Still, I found myself wanting to chase these idiots around the web, and mock them and yell at them until they would turn on their machines with reluctance because I would be there.
Once I'd calmed down (it's too hot to stay angry) I realized I had gotten so angry because I'd had to revise my pictures downward. I'd always viewed online trolls as Young Republican types, utterly assured of their mental superiority and convinced that liberalism the result of sloppy sentimental thinking. I knew them in high school: they tended to join the debate team, and tried to get onto the school newspaper just so they could write opinion pieces explaining how the world really was.
But in my school ( an ordinary suburban public school) all the members of the debate team were schooled in symbolic logic. And though I'd been playing WFF'N' Proof since about the 3rd grade (with myself--couldn't get anybody else to try it) and had been carrying around a copy of Willard van Orman Quine's book on Mathematical Logic since the 7th ( I just loooved all those cool symbols!), Lots of friends of mine on the geek side were perfectly comfortable with logical notation.

But the troll had never even seen symbolic logic notation: that was clear. And even the annoying folks on the debate team would never make fun of something unfamiliar to it, preferring instead to ignore it.

I realized that I was angry because, in one little part of my brain, I was arguing with the jerks on the debate team--and I suddenly had to revise that picture downwards.

I let it lie, Until I read someone, in the context of the horrible problem that the Internet lets just anybody publish, quoted Judge Richard Posner, saying that policy tended to be discussed only by the intelligentsia.

Intelligentsia? And just who are the intelligentsia in contemporary American society?

Good question.

There's lots of smart people across the country that think they belong to it; if the smart person is successful the probability goes up. But as society in general has become more fragmented, and real estate prices in major cities make it harder and harder for bohemian neighborhoods to exist, the clusterings of intelligent people have become smaller and smaller, and more and more centered on one's job. One may think that one's circle of wonderful creative friends is large, but who has a creative group of hundreds of writers, painters and philosophers (without benefit of university faculty)? (I know I get filled with a terrible longing reading about Montmartre at the turn of the last century.) The intelligentsia in this country has gotten awfully granulated.

The danger in that is that many people can get the term intelligentsia' confused with a good cocktail party with a couple of successful writers, an indie filmmaker, someone who works with Doctors Without Borders, and a bunch of rich people. Or the faculty lounge in the Modern Languages Department. Or the partners at the firm. An intelligentsia is something with power--intellectual power not always connected to real-world power, but power nonetheless. And none of those granules have that.

The Internet has the power to change that, removing the real estate values from the equation. And the wonderful thing that i've grown to realize is that America has bargeloads of excess capacity: all sorts of people in unpromising jobs in isolated places who are capable of joining the party.

It's actually, though, some of the self-descriptions of these granular intelligentsiae that will generate barriers. They can be pretty obvious and pretty reprehensible: the arrogance, incuriosity, and lazy sense of privilege of the Washington beltway crowd is only the most fragrant of current examples.

If we are to rebuild an intelligentsia in this country, one with real power and energy in it and one which actually contributes to the polity rather than leech off it, we had better have a good idea of what intelligent in the -sia sense means.

Say no more.

Herewith are what I consider the Four Pillars of Intelligence. Pardon me for my presumption, but I've met an awful lot of smart and clever (and even brainy) folks who have nonetheless been stupid, useless or worse than useless, and no good whatsoever for discourse and creation. And i think anatomizing it tis way is instructive, because it puts some of these people in a useful bin rather than the way overpopulated Asshole one.

Number 1: Desire. It seems ridiculously obvious that in order to be an intellectual, you have to want to be one. Society certainly doesn't give too many benefits or lauds to that path. But I want to make the point that it's very often sufficient. Really smart people tend to find intellectual matters easy: patterns click into place, information is easily remembered and others' arguments readily amassed. But there are people that I've met for whom the stuff doesn't come easily, but who ask these questions because they want to pursue these elusive goals. If anything, their pleasure is all the greater, and they often contribute much by not having an answer spring to mind in a flash. Smarts make it easier--but desire is more important, and trumps smarts.

Number 2: How To Think. As a smart kid, I just vacuumed up facts and concepts and structures. In school, where what was required was remembering and regurgitating, I was unstoppable. But I didn't know how to think. I remember reading Robert L. Heilbroner's book The making of economic society and because it was well structured and sounded reasonable i began to believe in it with a deep fervor. In retrospect I realized I had had no tools for critically analyzing an argument other than the most basic logical ones.
The University of Chicago taught me how to think: by teaching me how to question my own convictions and assumptions (and that questioning was a different process from doubting); how to ask questions that have no answers and still get something out of the process; to try to deal with an issue on its own terms rather than the terms you have handy, and how to look at what's at play as opposed to what the score is.
I have met more smart people who can't think than I like to contemplate. Lots of facts, and facts in structures, with a great big bag of arguments and judgments--but that's as far as it goes. They aren't always assholes and can be wonderful and personable, but don't enjoy discourse where they don't have a position.

Number Three: Alphabets. While I'm not including piles of data as one of the pillars, it's nonetheless not true that someone can jump into a discourse equipped only with an open supple attitude and enthusiasm and make a success of it. The U of C phrase for what you need is Universe of Discourse, and the rule of thumb passed down to me by my professors is to look for opposing pairs. The meat of the stuff is in between them.
Mathematics is the most blatant and the most simple: I can open a book of advanced mathematics and find the first page littered with symbols I don't know--and instantaneously I know that I have to read at least one more book before I read that one, in order to learn the alphabet used in that book.
It's possible to pick up the alphabet on the fly--smart people can be good at that--and you can certainly engage in discourse without specifics. But you must know them. If you refuse to learn the alphabet because you think yours is better, you are a troll and deserve to vanish at the next zebra crossing in a puff of symbolic logic.

Number Four: Patience. Humility in general is a good thing, mainly because we've got so much to be humble about. But this is more than that. This is the awareness that what you think is going on is probably not what is going on. This is, of course, one of the key elements in How To Think, but it's also a respect for the discourse you're in. The amazing Del Close taught me (among many other things) that in an improvisation, the worst instinct is to say no, even if it gets a laugh. To the other person in the improv, you always say yes, and... Similarly, in discourse, never close it down, even if you think you're so near an answer your teeth hurt. Don't ignore the feeling--use it--and don't denigrate the idea of answers either. It isn't all about process. But by respecting the discourse, the answer may be something much better than you thought. (It might not be--in which case you can always go back to your pile of stones.)

To sum up in the negative, there can be smart people 1) who have no interest in moving from where they are. (Power will tend to do that to you, sadly.) 2) who tend to use freeze-dried arguments slathered in facts instead of fresh thought, and who either get scared or angry when things get wild (the 'expert' syndrome). 3) who are well-meaning, but don't have a handle on the basic framework of the field of discourse. (This can be true for well-meaning humanists trying to discuss science--or well meaning scientists trying to discuss philosophy.) and 4) who are too excited to pay attention, and who think they find an answer because they want to have found an answer.

What use does this anatomization serve? Well, IMHO, as we move tentatively but eagerly towards a revival of national discourse, maybe we can avoid some of the traps that impede it. We have people in the MSM who have none of the four pillars operating--the type of people who call symbolic logic mathematics and deride it. But there are people who think that quickness of mind is the cutoff--and who thing that a comprehensive grounding in facts is the cutoff. Especially on the Net, details are available at a snap--and framing principles not so easy to find. People at the top of their profession can be good--but not if that position removes their desire for discourse.

This is one of the most heartening things about my lifelong experience of America--that there is all this excess capacity. People without schooling or brilliance who nonetheless love to think--people who've never used their education to make money or advance their social standing--and who think and talk as seriously as any Doctor of Thinkology. I've seen it in real life--and it's all over the internet.

Sadly, there's a hell of a lot of trash to take out: but ∃ hope.

Posted: Tuesday - July 10, 2007 at 10:38 PM        

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