Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America

[sooda]

Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America
Social dysfunction can be traced to the abandonment of reason

America is killing itself through its embrace and exaltation of ignorance, and the evidence is all around us. Dylann Roof, the Charleston shooter who used race as a basis for hate and mass murder, is just the latest horrific example. Many will correctly blame Roof's actions on America's culture of racism and gun violence, but it's time to realize that such phenomena are directly tied to the nation's culture of ignorance.

In a country where a sitting congressman told a crowd that evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell,” where the chairman of a Senate environmental panel brought a snowball into the chamber as evidence that climate change is a hoax, where almost one in three citizens can’t name the vice president, it is beyond dispute that critical thinking has been abandoned as a cultural value.

Our failure as a society to connect the dots, to see that such anti-intellectualism comes with a huge price, could eventually be our downfall.


Excerpt:

What Americans rarely acknowledge is that many of their social problems are rooted in the rejection of critical thinking or, conversely, the glorification of the emotional and irrational. What else could explain the hyper-patriotism that has many accepting an outlandish notion that America is far superior to the rest of the world?

Love of one’s country is fine, but many Americans seem to honestly believe that their country both invented and perfected the idea of freedom, that the quality of life here far surpasses everywhere else in the world.

But it doesn’t. International quality of life rankings place America far from the top, at sixteenth. America’s rates of murder and other violent crime dwarf most of the rest of the developed world, as does its incarceration rate, while its rates of education and scientific literacy are embarrassingly low. American schools, claiming to uphold “traditional values,” avoid fact-based sex education, and thus we have the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world.

And those rates are notably highest where so-called “biblical values” are prominent. Go outside the Bible belt, and the rates generally trend downward.

As this suggests, the impact of fundamentalist religion in driving American anti-intellectualism has been, and continues to be, immense. Old-fashioned notions of sex education may seem like a relatively minor issue to many, but taking old-time religion too seriously can be extremely dangerous in the modern era.

High-ranking individuals, even in the military, see a confrontation between good and evil as biblically predicted and therefore inevitable. They relish the thought of being a righteous part of the final days.

continued

Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America

 

[sooda]

Fundamentalist religion is also a major force in denying human-caused climate change, a phenomenon that the scientific community has accepted for years.

Interestingly, anti-intellectual fundamentalists are joined in their climate change denial with unusual bedfellows: corporate interests that stand to gain from the rejection of sound science on climate.

Corporate influence on climate and environmental policy, meanwhile, is simply more evidence of anti-intellectualism in action, for corporate domination of American society is another result of a public that is not thinking critically. Americans have allowed their democracy to slip away, their culture overtaken by enormous corporations that effectively control both the governmental apparatus and the media, thus shaping life around materialism and consumption.

Indeed, these corporate interests encourage anti-intellectualism, conditioning Americans into conformity and passive acceptance of institutional dominance.

They are the ones who stand to gain from the excessive fear and nationalism that result in militaristic foreign policy and absurdly high levels of military spending. They are the ones who stand to gain from consumers who spend money they don’t have on goods and services they don’t need.

They are the ones who want a public that is largely uninformed and distracted, thus allowing government policy to be crafted by corporate lawyers and lobbyists.

They are the ones who stand to gain from unregulated securities markets. And they are the ones who stand to gain from a prison-industrial complex that generates the highest rates of incarceration in the developed world.

Americans can and should denounce the racist and gun-crazed culture that shamefully resulted in nine corpses in Charleston this week, but they also need to dig deeper. At the core of all of this dysfunction is an abandonment of reason.

continued

Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America

 

[Skwim]

Fundamentalist religion is also a major force in denying human-caused climate change, a phenomenon that the scientific community has accepted for years.

Interestingly, anti-intellectual fundamentalists are joined in their climate change denial with unusual bedfellows: corporate interests that stand to gain from the rejection of sound science on climate.

Corporate influence on climate and environmental policy, meanwhile, is simply more evidence of anti-intellectualism in action, for corporate domination of American society is another result of a public that is not thinking critically. Americans have allowed their democracy to slip away, their culture overtaken by enormous corporations that effectively control both the governmental apparatus and the media, thus shaping life around materialism and consumption.

Indeed, these corporate interests encourage anti-intellectualism, conditioning Americans into conformity and passive acceptance of institutional dominance.

They are the ones who stand to gain from the excessive fear and nationalism that result in militaristic foreign policy and absurdly high levels of military spending. They are the ones who stand to gain from consumers who spend money they don’t have on goods and services they don’t need.

They are the ones who want a public that is largely uninformed and distracted, thus allowing government policy to be crafted by corporate lawyers and lobbyists.

They are the ones who stand to gain from unregulated securities markets. And they are the ones who stand to gain from a prison-industrial complex that generates the highest rates of incarceration in the developed world.

Americans can and should denounce the racist and gun-crazed culture that shamefully resulted in nine corpses in Charleston this week, but they also need to dig deeper. At the core of all of this dysfunction is an abandonment of reason.

continued

Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America

You're making the mistake of lumping all of America under the Republican dung heap. It isn't fair.

. ​

 

[Revoltingest]

I'm skeptical of the article.
Just looking at one claim....
It cites teen pregnancy as evidence of anti-intellectualism.
Even if that did correlate with anti-smartypantsness, the
teen pregnancy rate has been steadily dropping recently.
Ref....
Trends in Teen Pregnancy and Childbearing

And for skwim, I have a different graph....er....picture.

 

[sooda]

I'm skeptical of the article.
Just looking at one claim....
It cites teen pregnancy as evidence of anti-intellectualism.
Even if that did correlate with anti-smartypantsness, the
teen pregnancy rate has been steadily dropping recently.
Ref....
Trends in Teen Pregnancy and Childbearing

Yes.. Now look at maternal mortality in the Texas Bible Belt.

 

[Revoltingest]

Yes.. Now look at maternal mortality in the Texas Bible Belt.

Whatever that figure is, the article still smacks of lacking reason.
But I admit that after running into that gaffe, I was uninspired
to read more. And there's still the question of whether or not
the teens were married (a point relevant to the claim).

I've never detected an excess of intellectualism in Ameristan
anyway. What would be a good way to objectively & quantitatively
measure the change? Are things really worse?

 

[sooda]

Whatever that figure is, the article still smacks of lacking reason.
But I admit that after running into that gaffe, I was uninspired
to read more. And there's still the question of whether or not
the teens were married (a point relevant to the claim).

I've never detected an excess of intellectualism in Ameristan
anyway. What would be a good way to objectively & quantitatively
measure the change? Are things really worse?

Yeah.. its worse.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Just think , the answer would be a humongous bloated big government, higher taxes, intensive surveillance , and a complete ban on weaponry.

That will teach pathologically insane in this country.

 

[Nakosis]

But the problem of “anti-intellectualism” as a category go beyond the politics that frequently accompany it. As a number of people pointed out during the conference, the term is enormously slippery. Among other things it can mean:

1. A hostility to thinking.
2. A hostility to people who think.
3. A hostility to a certain kind of thinking.
4. A hostility to a certain group of people who think.
5. Stupidity.
6. Opposition to something called “intellectualism.”

I think that the last of these options is a little silly. As in “anti-semitism,” the “ism” in “anti-intellectualism” is, as It were, added after, not before, the “anti.” “Anti-intellectualism” is the system of thought of people who are anti-intellectual. Defining “intellectualism” is as unnecessary to defining “anti-intellectualism” as defining “semitism” is to defining “anti-semitism.”

But the first four meanings are all potentially useful. The problem is that they often bleed into each other in sloppy ways. “Anti-intellectualism,” like other essentially protean concepts, can easily be used in ways that avoid clarifying which of the four you’re actually talking about. And in many cases, “anti-intellectualism” ends up being just a highfalutin’ way of saying #5.
Post-Conference Thoughts on "Anti-Intellectualism" | Society for US Intellectual History

 

[Brickjectivity]

Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America
Social dysfunction can be traced to the abandonment of reason

America is killing itself through its embrace and exaltation of ignorance, and the evidence is all around us. Dylann Roof, the Charleston shooter who used race as a basis for hate and mass murder, is just the latest horrific example. Many will correctly blame Roof's actions on America's culture of racism and gun violence, but it's time to realize that such phenomena are directly tied to the nation's culture of ignorance.

In a country where a sitting congressman told a crowd that evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell,” where the chairman of a Senate environmental panel brought a snowball into the chamber as evidence that climate change is a hoax, where almost one in three citizens can’t name the vice president, it is beyond dispute that critical thinking has been abandoned as a cultural value.

Our failure as a society to connect the dots, to see that such anti-intellectualism comes with a huge price, could eventually be our downfall.


Excerpt:

What Americans rarely acknowledge is that many of their social problems are rooted in the rejection of critical thinking or, conversely, the glorification of the emotional and irrational. What else could explain the hyper-patriotism that has many accepting an outlandish notion that America is far superior to the rest of the world?

Love of one’s country is fine, but many Americans seem to honestly believe that their country both invented and perfected the idea of freedom, that the quality of life here far surpasses everywhere else in the world.

But it doesn’t. International quality of life rankings place America far from the top, at sixteenth. America’s rates of murder and other violent crime dwarf most of the rest of the developed world, as does its incarceration rate, while its rates of education and scientific literacy are embarrassingly low. American schools, claiming to uphold “traditional values,” avoid fact-based sex education, and thus we have the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world.

And those rates are notably highest where so-called “biblical values” are prominent. Go outside the Bible belt, and the rates generally trend downward.

As this suggests, the impact of fundamentalist religion in driving American anti-intellectualism has been, and continues to be, immense. Old-fashioned notions of sex education may seem like a relatively minor issue to many, but taking old-time religion too seriously can be extremely dangerous in the modern era.

High-ranking individuals, even in the military, see a confrontation between good and evil as biblically predicted and therefore inevitable. They relish the thought of being a righteous part of the final days.

continued

Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America

"Posted Jun 23, 2015" David Niose - Wikipedia
The article is an opinion piece by a president of the American Humanist Association and the Secular Coalition for America. Despite the title of the article he argues that religion is killing America, and he labels religion as anti-intellectualism. In other words he considers religion to be that which is killing America, the rejection of critical thinking. He's the author of Fighting Back the Right: Reclaiming America from the Attack on Reason.

For fun I have dug up a counter argument article on Counterpunch. Posted May 28, 2015 just a few days before the article in the OP.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/28/how-the-humanist-movement-fosters-economic-injustice/
This is by David Hoelscher (no not the NFL defense tackle the other one)
https://thehumanist.com/contributor/david-hoelscher/
He writes articles about whether humanism equals socialism and how bad 'The new atheism' is.

 

[David T]

Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America
Social dysfunction can be traced to the abandonment of reason

America is killing itself through its embrace and exaltation of ignorance, and the evidence is all around us. Dylann Roof, the Charleston shooter who used race as a basis for hate and mass murder, is just the latest horrific example. Many will correctly blame Roof's actions on America's culture of racism and gun violence, but it's time to realize that such phenomena are directly tied to the nation's culture of ignorance.

In a country where a sitting congressman told a crowd that evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell,” where the chairman of a Senate environmental panel brought a snowball into the chamber as evidence that climate change is a hoax, where almost one in three citizens can’t name the vice president, it is beyond dispute that critical thinking has been abandoned as a cultural value.

Our failure as a society to connect the dots, to see that such anti-intellectualism comes with a huge price, could eventually be our downfall.


Excerpt:

What Americans rarely acknowledge is that many of their social problems are rooted in the rejection of critical thinking or, conversely, the glorification of the emotional and irrational. What else could explain the hyper-patriotism that has many accepting an outlandish notion that America is far superior to the rest of the world?

Love of one’s country is fine, but many Americans seem to honestly believe that their country both invented and perfected the idea of freedom, that the quality of life here far surpasses everywhere else in the world.

But it doesn’t. International quality of life rankings place America far from the top, at sixteenth. America’s rates of murder and other violent crime dwarf most of the rest of the developed world, as does its incarceration rate, while its rates of education and scientific literacy are embarrassingly low. American schools, claiming to uphold “traditional values,” avoid fact-based sex education, and thus we have the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world.

And those rates are notably highest where so-called “biblical values” are prominent. Go outside the Bible belt, and the rates generally trend downward.

As this suggests, the impact of fundamentalist religion in driving American anti-intellectualism has been, and continues to be, immense. Old-fashioned notions of sex education may seem like a relatively minor issue to many, but taking old-time religion too seriously can be extremely dangerous in the modern era.

High-ranking individuals, even in the military, see a confrontation between good and evil as biblically predicted and therefore inevitable. They relish the thought of being a righteous part of the final days.

continued

Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America

You didn't watch the hunger games

 

[Brickjectivity]

Anyway David Niose is claiming that America is being killed by anti-intellectualism in the guise of religion. David Hoelscher is pointing out that humanism is maybe also killing America.

 

[sooda]

You didn't watch the hunger games

No.. Haven't seen it.

 

[Revoltingest]

Yeah.. its worse.

We'll agree to disagree.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I'm skeptical of the article.
Just looking at one claim....
It cites teen pregnancy as evidence of anti-intellectualism.
Even if that did correlate with anti-smartypantsness, the
teen pregnancy rate has been steadily dropping recently.
Ref....
Trends in Teen Pregnancy and Childbearing

And for skwim, I have a different graph....er....picture.

In my reading of the article, there was recognition of the general overall decline in teen pregnancy in the US and the comparisons were made with that in mind. The articles I have read on the subject are referring to unwed teenage mothers. There is also research that indicates a strong association with teen pregnancy and the religiosity measured for a state and the tendency bears out that Bible Belt states have generally higher teen pregnancy rates than those outside that region.

I think that the author should have used better resources, but his use of teen pregnancy data does support his position. These are largely in populations that have lower economic opportunities and do not place much or any value on education.

Carville is not known to have actually made the statements attributed to him in your picture.

 

[Revoltingest]

Carville is not known to have actually made the statements attributed to him in your picture.

I wondered about that.
But I decided to not double check them, because
if false, they work even better as my gift to Skwim.

 

[Stanyon]

Could you state why you believe Dylann Roof was exalted and embraced?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I wondered about that.
But I decided to not double check them, because
if false, they work even better as my gift to Skwim.

During my tenure with internet discussions that goes back to the good old days of Usenet, I have noticed what I consider a strong association between the apparent level of education and the apparent religiosity of others I have engaged. While anecdotal, it does bear up, but I have to keep in mind that my observations are not likely to be representative. The internet does seem to magnetize certain types that have most likely skewed this for me.

Be easy on Skwim. I have, in my short time here, grown fond of him. I think the world needs gadflies to keep us all thinking and evaluating. He does a good job of filling that roll.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Could you state why you believe Dylann Roof was exalted and embraced?

Who are you asking? Probably somebody does. Those Columbine criminals have a following.

 

[Revoltingest]

During my tenure with internet discussions that goes back to the good old days of Usenet, I have noticed what I consider a strong association between the apparent level of education and the apparent religiosity of others I have engaged. While anecdotal, it does bear up, but I have to keep in mind that my observations are not likely to be representative. The internet does seem to magnetize certain types that have most likely skewed this for me.

Be easy on Skwim. I have, in my short time here, grown fond of him. I think the world needs gadflies to keep us all thinking and evaluating. He does a good job of filling that roll.

I see to it that Skwim suffers no injury.