 In
this era of anti-intellectualism and learned helplessness, the media,
and we in the alternative media, have a responsibility to inform and
engage the public on matters that are important and on vanguard
thinking about these matters, even if they're difficult and make the
public uncomfortable.
A decade ago, literary agent John Brockman, who was recently profiled by The Guardian as the owner of the world's most powerful and envied Rolodex, wrote a book called The Third Culture,
which, along with several of his earlier works is now available free
online. The book was the first in a series of discussions, inspired by
his intellectual meeting group The Reality Club (which has now morphed
into the online community-space called Edge),
about matters that Brockman thought were important and needed to be
made accessible to everyone. The books are presented as a series of
group conversations among astonishingly bright and knowledgeable
people, with the questions from Brockman that initiated the
conversations edited out, so that they appear to be spontaneous and
astonishing flashes of non-stop genius and insight. Brockman explains:
"Throughout history, only a small number of people have done the serious thinking for everybody."
In his books and on Edge, he invites serious thinkers to bring others
into the discussion. The tagline for the massive and generous website
is "To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most
complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have
them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves." Most of
the participants are scientists rather than philosophers or
intellectuals from the arts and literary fields, and Brockman is
unapologetic for this: He clearly believes that this is where the most
important, integrative and expansive thinking is going on.
Last year I quoted extensively
from the responses to one of his annual exercises called The World
Question Center, when he challenged these "complex and sophisticated
minds" to answer the question "What Is Your Law?" I still refer to
these 'laws' frequently -- they have altered my ways of thinking on
many subjects.
So here's the situation as I see it:
- Very few people are doing much serious thinking.
- Those people who are, tend to be cliquish, partly because
so few are interested in what they are thinking about, partly because
it's so difficult for the rest of us, uninformed and unpracticed, to
keep up. As a result, their ideas and their implications are largely
closeted.
- The media, which could help bridge the chasm between these
people and those who could learn from these ideas and put them to
effective use, are disinterested in doing so, partly because they don't
think their audience is interested, partly because they don't think
their audience is capable of understanding, and partly because their
background is substantially in non-scientific disciplines and they are
a little miffed at the idea that scientists are doing most of the
important thinking.
- The rich and powerful, who could actually employ the
results of this important thinking, are convinced that preserving their
wealth and influence has little to do with imagination and innovation,
and so are disinclined to pay much attention to it, and many of them
are also anti-intellectual by nature (just look at what they read in
their 'spare' time) and hence incurious and skeptical of what little
seriously novel thought they are exposed to.
- The political elite is threatened by new ideas and also
shares the anti-intellectualism of the rich and powerful, so unless the
message can be captured in a sound bite they are likewise uninterested
in exposing themselves or their citizenry to new ideas.
- Modern conservatives are overwhelmingly populist, and hence
like things simple and unchanging. They don't do any serious thinking
themselves and certainly don't want anyone in their families exposed to
such dangerous stuff.
- Many modern progressives distrust technology (for perfectly
understandable reasons) and by association distrust science, which they
see as technology's handmaiden. They don't see the need for or
practical value of serious intellectual discussion, don't see it as
actionable, and hence don't see it as important. "The people have the
answers, if only we would listen".
The consequence of all this is that serious thinking is considered a
pastime, an exercise of dubious value primarily for students in
university. Beyond that, serious intellectual effort is only respected
when it is tactical, applied in the context of a specific short-term
task, towards achieving a known, practical goal. In a world of immense
scarcity, in which time is the scarcest commodity of all, this vicious
cycle of anti-intellectualism is perfectly understandable. It explains
why Michael Jackson's trial hogs all the news headlines, and the lion's
share of social discourse, while global warming and Darfur are
substantially ignored. And when we are inclined to think about things
we don't want or like to think about, we find we are seriously out of
practice (present company accepted, of course).
There was a time when people were motivated to invest in serious
thinking and thoughtful social discourse. That was a time when people
made more time for serious thinking and discussion, when people did
most things for themselves, and when great ideas were respected and
talked about. But today we are entrained with learned helplessness,
convinced that understanding and sharing and coming up with great ideas
and thinking seriously about them is a largely useless activity. And why would we want to invest a lot of precious time to study and understand something merely interesting?
The legacy media seem determined to abrogate their responsibility to
inform and engage the public on matters that are important,especially
when they are complicated and make the public uncomfortable. So it
falls on our shoulders, as the alternative media, to be the advocates
for the truth, and to assume that responsibility. I believe it is
essential that we bloggers tone down the jargon and the 'in'
conversations, and the rhetoric and partisanship, and ratchet up the
information and thought leadership and conversation and debate in our
online journals, to reach a much wider and under-served audience, and
hence to fill that void.
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MADE IN CANADA
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