Elizabeth Mitchell: What happened to America's public intellectuals?

【Translator / Observer Network Translator Wuhan University of Science and Technology Wu Wanwei】

The state always needs these important people to give us guidance, but are they still with us? If so, who are they?

In the wake of Brexit and The Trump presidential election, experts and commentators who can come up with highly influential views are trying to figure out the causes of the populist frenzy that surprised many. In numerous review articles and books (such as The Death of an Expert), the consensus seems to be that nerds are dead.

This painful conclusion places particular emphasis on public intellectuals, who created the nation in 1787 during the 116 days of heated squabbling in the Constituent Assembly, and that people such as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison relied entirely on words to create the new state. They then supported the country with 85 newspaper columns, interpreting and defending their work under the pseudonym Publius, now known as the Federalist Papers.

There was a time when Americans seemed to be confused with public intellectuals in their daily lives. They are our preachers and teachers, and their voices are found in times of crisis. Ralph Waldo Emerson lashed out fiercely at Americans for embracing slavery, while his fellow pastor, Henry Ward Beecher, saved the United States by traveling to Europe and giving a series of speeches to dispel Europe's desire to recognize the federal government of the South.

After World War II, the Smart Movement made new progress, and the G.I. Bill greatly increased the potential of American universities. In this phase of intellectual flourishing, before specialization has fully gained a foothold, philosophers, historians, and sociologists explain the postwar world to university-educated men and women who aspire to intellectual enlightenment.

The TV provided fresh stage. The ABC's "The Dick Cavett Show," which opened in the late 1960s, and William F. Buckley Jr.'s "Firing Line" on public television, attracted the attention of the intellectual community. Linguist Noam Chomsky joined berkeley's "Vietnam and Intellectuals" discussion in 1969. On The Cavett show, writer James Baldwin sketches everyday racism in America to a Yale professor of philosophy.

Literary critics Camille Paglia, Betty Friedan and Arianna Huffington also appeared on The Shooting Line in the late 1990s. "The women's movement is a disaster" is pureLy Berkeley rhetoric, but in reality, it's a debate that rarely comes up right now. Our chats are all focused on fox news on the right or on the left's half-night comedy shows.

Perhaps reaching its final peak in 1978, Popular praised essayist Susan Sontag as "America's chief intellectual singer," noting her 8,000-volume library, her black Rex crocodile leather riding boots and her work habits: "She drank coffee and ate ecstasy. "Never before or after has American intellectuals had enough charisma to bring glory to the checkout lanes.

Just a few years later, in 1985, Robert Bellah, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, publicly denounced the professionalization of academia for making the best of people incapacitated. He urged academic colleagues to engage "in dialogue with fellow citizens on issues of common concern." ”

Today's pessimists believe that the current threat in academia is precisely the serious lack of topics of common interest. Under the influence of social media, we are caught in the bubble of "confirmation bias" and isolate ourselves, while social media, especially the 300024 (diagnosis stock) posting robots that engage in "computational propaganda" on Twitter, rely on publishing fake news to intensify extreme partisan bias. If you only speak to insiders, you cannot become a true public intellectual.

In fact, the impact of the information explosion on the life of the mind was predicted in 1968, when the famous writer Norman Mailer and the Canadian prophet Marshall McLuhan discussed the issue of human identity in an increasingly technological era in the melancholy television studio. McLuhan calmly predicted, with his particularly Mosesian tone, that the media would bring humanity back to a state of tribalism. Because we can't absorb every data point or know so many people. He explained that we can only rely on conventional wisdom. McLuhan said, "When you give people too much information, they have to resort to pattern recognition. ”

Photo caption: A Stargazing Guide to the Starry Sky for American Public Intellectuals

Because there are many public intellectuals in the United States today, often forming different clusters, we may be able to place them in different categories. It should be admitted that such "astronomy" is ridiculous (yes, we recognize that these "stars" do not revolve around the planets), but this is a rough guide to help us understand the illustrious people who led the national dialogue. Invisible to the naked eye are long-time shining stars such as Noam Chomsky, Bell Hooks, Daniel Kahneman, Henry Kissinger, Toni Morrison, Charles Murray, Richard Posner, Robert Murray, and John Murray. Robert Reich, Gloria Steinem, Garry Wills and E.O. Wilson）。 We keep an eye on new stars from Silicon Valley, including Shery Sandberg and Peter Thiel.

Feminist right

Leftist interpreter, scientific expert

Specialized rising stars

Of course, in 2017, it's not that we don't have information, it's that there's too much information. We browse the packaged feeds of information for hot topics and perspectives that support our perspective.

That's why we may take a different perspective on the heated debates online or elsewhere. It has in fact become a form of tribalism, marked by an aggressive insistence on coherence. According to sociologists, human beings often resort to bullying and moral condemnation to maintain the unity of society as a whole. Perhaps our cable news wars and Facebook tear-ups are not a dying struggle for ideological discourse, after all, there are signs that this national "tribe" is trying to unite the various parts.

The potential market for thought discussion has become larger. More than a third of the U.S. population holds a four-year college degree, an unprecedented high. Because of the dramatic increase in female and black and Hispanic graduates, today's public intellectuals look different than they once were. It's no coincidence that some of the fastest-growing beacons of thought come from people of color, like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay.

If we look back at history, the public knowledge score has always occurred at a time when the country is deeply divided: during the Civil War, during the Vietnam War, during the struggle for civil and feminist rights, etc. The return of public intellectuals is likely to be seen in today's moment of deep ideological divisions, and just when we need them, there will be thinkers and critics who can communicate emotional barriers. This time, though, they're likely to appear on online forums and could stir up more podcast videos.