So here we are at Point 'A,' otherwise known as 'the present.' And all of us want to get to Point 'B,' a land of freedom and safety and peace, where our children can play out in the flowers with the bunnies and the baby deer.
The arguing starts when we begin to plot a course from Point A to Point B.
Okay, so we buy all the maps we can, lay them out on a table and set sail. But before we are out of the harbor, we see that some maps have channels marked for clear sailing, while others have horrible reefs and shoals in exactly the same place.
It reflects no great credit on us as a species when we come to the sorry realization that most people would rather just sit in the chartroom and argue about the maps than actually navigate to safety. This tendency to believe social theory over practical observation has cost the lives of hundreds and hundreds of millions of people -' every one as unique as that wonderful and charming you.
People will sit in the chartroom, and argue about their maps, while the ship of history rips out her keel -' it has happened so many times that it is beyond counting, and is, indeed, why so many very bright people -' people like Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain -' seem to lose all hope and are left with nothing but their bitter humor to point out how pathetic and futile it all is.
Well, maybe.
But as the arguments rage hither and yon down in the chartroom, as maps and cartographers are bandied back and forth like trading cards and people come to blows over mapmakers dead a century or a millennium before, there does remain one small, unassuming little token of hope. Not much really, just an action so simple and obvious that we overlook it time and time again.
What can we do to end this arguing about which way to sail and on what map? How can we tell where the reefs and channels really are? Dear God, is there nothing we can do to get an answer among all these authorities?
Bueller? Anyone?
Yes, you -' the eager kid in the front row -' you say we should what? Go on deck and look outside?
How na've! How unsophisticated! How lacking in nuance! How'American. It can't be as simple as that.
Oh, but it can, bucko. It really can be: Just. That. Simple.
I know that it is not common practice to read standing up; however, if you are reading this while standing I urge you in the strongest imaginable terms to sit down right away, because what you are about to read in the very next sentence will so invert your preconceived notions that you may experience dizziness, nausea and end up taking a very nasty fall, and I don't wish to be responsible for that -' so here goes:
I was kind of a dork in High School.
No, it's too true. How dorky was I? I was dorky enough to be on the Debate Team, and worse, I was dorky enough to be good at it.
I learned two important things in High School Debate:
1. There are no cheerleaders for Debate.
2. Authorities are worthless.
At least, the idea of appeal to authority is worthless. Let me demonstrate with an amusing anecdote'
High School Debate -' at least its 1977 variant -' had nothing really to do with debate. It was nothing more than four pimply-faced kids standing in front of a room of bored adults trying to see who can read the most index cards in the shortest period of time.
You see, each year, the Debate Fairy set a national topic: in my senior year it was Prison Reform. One team, the Affirmative team, would try to make the case that even as we sit in the classroom waving evidence cards, vast armies of super-human, pumped-up, rage-addicted Uber-prisoners were at this very moment breaking into the judges' houses and eating their precious children with fava beans and a nice Chianti. Something must be done! The other team, the Negative team, would try to make the case that things are swell and we don't need prison reform -' in fact, any prison reform whatsoever would cause the moon to fall out of its orbit and crash into your very house crushing your precious children, plus your supply of fava beans and nice Chiantis, even as we speak. It ain't broke so don't fix it!
Now all this would be nothing more than a six-year-old's game of Cowboys and Indians with all the accompanying 'I-got-you-no-you-didn't' nonsense, except for the presence of one critical element: evidence.
Now here comes the transcendental moment for those of us who were paying attention: neither team knew until moments before the debate whether they were going to be affirmative or negative. What that means is, at any given tournament, we had to have tons of evidence and countless index cards with sources like US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT and studies from places like EMORY UNIVERSITY and HARVARD SCHOOL OF LAW' and we had to have this mountain of evidence for both sides of the argument.
If we were Affirmative, we might have written a neat little case outlining the critical and extremely urgent need for... oh, let's say conjugal visits. (We perpetually horny high school dorks really seemed to like arguing that case waaaay beyond its effective shelf life.) We had card after card after card of evidence citing things like an Authoritative Study done at Florida State University that showed unequivocally how Conjugal Visits reduce the incidents of prison violence to negative numbers and cause prisoners to start lending libraries and donate their cigarette money to Battered Women's Shelters. However, if we randomly ended up as the Negative team, and sat facing other dorks who claimed that conjugal visitation reduce the incidents of prison violence to negative numbers and cause prisoners to start lending libraries and donate their cigarette money to Battered Women's Shelters, then we would have to pull out card after card after card showing that an Important and Thorough Investigation carried out by The University of Florida proved conclusively that Conjugal Visitation had in fact no measurable effect at all, or, better, caused prisoners to murder guards by hanging them by their own entrails due to their aroused, inter-conjugal libidos.
Now you can follow this absolutely truthful farce to its logical conclusion: namely, that since both sides had evidence and experts out the wazoo, then the only way for the poor hapless judge to be able to determine a winner was to see who could get the most evidence out in the smallest span of time. And so debate, which I had hoped and assumed would be the art of persuasion by argument, had long before devolved into 'flow charts' listing what expert said what, which was then countered by a study contradicting his findings, followed by an investigation into the methodological flaws in the contradiction, followed by revelations that the expert who found the methodological flaw in the contradiction to the original study actually owned a motor home dealership which rented space for'prison conjugal visitation.
Now when my partner, Willie, was first affirmative, he made the case -' and when he was first negative he attacked the case. I presented or attacked the plan. We -' I should say Willie, as this was pre-Google and one had to go to the library -- started the year with a small box of index cards. An arms race soon developed, as we started to meet teams with two or three boxes of index cards, so we raised them a briefcase. They responded with two or three briefcases, and before we could counter with a convoy of wheeled filing cabinets, I began to realize that all of the cards and briefcases were essentially nothing more than props. These props gave us the illusion of credibility -' three briefcases of evidence cards! Wow! These kids know their shit from their Shinola!
However, once the Very Important Authority genie was out of the bottle, I no longer had any faith in it whatsoever. And so when I did my plan attack, I would appear to thoughtfully and with great consideration grab three or four random cards -' preferably one from each case -' and then I would get up in front of the judges. And instead of rattling off flow charts and evidence like the other countless drones they had heard all the long, long , loooong day, I would sit back against the table, look them in the eye, and smile. Then I'd say, 'Ladies and Gentlemen, our opponents have their evidence'' ' gesture ' 'and we have ours.'
At this point I would wave the random cards.
'So I'm going to just put these cards down'' -' awesome -' 'and just ask you to think about this plan of theirs. Just use your common sense. This idea of letting serial pedophiles go out daily -' unsupervised -- to grow sunflowers in Child Care centers in order to raise their self esteem and provide valuable sunflower-growing skills'does this really seem like such a good idea to you, despite what Dr. Willoughby Cardigan-Ross of the Yale University Sunflower Enrichment Center for the Cessation of Prison Violence has to say?'
We won a lot of debates that way.
We won a lot of debates that way because, contrary to what the self-appointed elite believe -' and what they are trying mightily to convince you to believe -' the fact remains that the common person both here and abroad is not stupid at all.
This is terrifying to the elites. They see themselves as Baron Frankenstein, and us as the unruly mob armed with pitchforks and torches.
I see us both that way too.
Common people may not have access to as many evidence cards; that is true. But as I said, those cards cut both ways. You don't have to take my word for this: in fact, the whole point of this book is to urge you not to take anybody's word for anything without challenging it. So ask yourself: How many of these endless debates bring out endless experts and endless studies to endlessly try to convince you of an outcome you have already experienced just through the act of living and working out in the real world -' so-called because that is where reality lives? What does your experience tell you? Because experience -' that is, experimental results -' are worth a thousand theories. When you use your common sense, your experience, you are opening the window and seeing whether or not the map matches the coastline. If it does not, then it doesn't matter how credentialed or tenured or respected the cartographer is or was -' he is wrong. He says river delta; there sits a waterfall. Wrong.
Next map!
These people, down below, arguing endlessly in the chartroom -' they have a word for themselves that they find flattering. They call themselves intellectuals. I considered myself one, and believed all manner of mental pudding until I got a little experience, and as a result of opening that window on life, I am far less intellectual and immeasurably more intelligent.
It's sad but true: there are people who are deathly afraid to go up on deck, face the sunshine, and realize that the maps they have so lovingly and painstakingly crafted over decades are essentially worthless pieces of crap. They are so wrong, in so many places, that they are far worse than no maps at all. They draw all manner of hazards where there are none, and disasterously, they show open seas and smooth sailing in the most treacherous and deadly places. Such maps are not merely worthless; they are dangerous.
There was a time when intellectual meant someone who uses reason and intellect. Today, people who call themselves intellectuals are in a form of mental death spiral: they search for, and find, those index cards that support their world view, and clutch little red books like rosaries in the face of all external evidence. They are ruled by appeals to authority. Their self-image and sense of emotional well-being trumps any and all objective evidence to the contrary.
How many students today believe what they believe because they met someone who knew a guy whose girlfriend turned him on to an article by Noam Chomsky? Noam Chomsky predicted, in his even, intellectual, authoritative, tenured manner, that if the US went to war in Afghanistan after 9/11, the result would be 3 million Afghan casualties. How many of these students who worship St. Noam independently ask themselves why he has, to date, come up 2,999,500 bodies short? Noam is not wrong by a factor of one or two; Noam is not wrong by an order of magnitude. Noam is not wrong by a factor of a hundred to one. Noam is wrong by more than three orders of magnitude. Noam is wrong by a factor of 6,000 to one. Noam says the reef is ten feet off the port bow; when in fact it is more than three miles away. That's six thousand to one. Noam says the ocean is six thousand feet deep when in fact the keel has been ripped out and is sitting on the sandbar back yonder: that's a 6,000-to-one error. Extrapolating this accuracy rate, if Noam writes 6,000 pages on the evil of the United States, how many pages of truth might there by in such a twenty-volume set?
Does this mean that everything Noam Chomsky writes is nonsense? Not at all. He is a professor of Linguistics. I am not qualified to say how accurate the work in his field of expertise is. I can however make a stab at how accurate he is in the field of US foreign policy, and if you have a handheld calculator at home, you can make the same comparison and achieve the same results.
The same goes for Michael Moore. Are all of his maps incorrect? No, just almost all of them. While he is demonstrably wrong about the contours of the American Character, I'm sure he has the route to his bank well worked out, and his triangulation of the location of nearby donut shops has attained GPS-like accuracy.
And I never claimed I would never take cheap shots; only that I have a strict quota that I abide by religiously.
Intellectualism, as it is practiced today, is a trap.
It is not a palatial hall of great minds looking for answers and then testing them in the real world; it is a basement in your parent's house filled with lazy and filthy hippies eating your leftovers and drinking the last of your milk. Intellectualism is certainly not the same as intelligence, and more and more, it is becoming antithetical to intelligence. When well-off people who call themselves intellectuals drive their SUV's to march in support of Marxism, you can see the chasm between intellectualism and intelligence in full flower. When elitists who fancy themselves brighter and more compassionate than the rest of us choose to support the Taliban, with its stoning of women and execution of homosexuals in football stadiums before mandatory audiences, over a representative democracy with unparalleled structural protections of minorities and freedoms of expression, then self-styled intellectuals have abandoned intelligence altogether, as well as morality, reason, compassion and indeed sanity.
Likewise, when coffee-house intellectuals dictate their worldview according to non-existent pipelines or supposed theft of oil revenues where no evidence of such theft can be produced but deposits into Iraqi national accounts can, then one has to ask one's self if this intellectual badge is worth the mud it's printed on.
There are two other salient qualities that seem to define the modern intellectual, and neither of them reflect glory upon the title.
The first is a preening arrogance. This goes well beyond the larval, poseur stage; otherwise known as the Coffee-shop intellectual. These are the profound ponderers with the round glasses that have no prescription lenses -' but they certainly do make one look serious and deep -' and that is the important thing. They carry obscure books by French intellectuals which they pretend to read in the original French.
They are emotional eleven year olds trying to look adult by smoking cigarettes; as with eleven year old smokers, one does not know whether to laugh or cry. In any case they are harmless and can be safely ignored. Far more dangerous are people who manage to worm their way into positions of influence, usually in bureaucracies or university faculties, and then can inflict tremendous damage -' although not through bold action, for action is anathema to today's intellectual set.
No, it is a slow, corrosive process, and one has only to look at the language of deconstructionism and post-modernism to realize that the goal of the professional intellectual is to take any problem or issue that might exist in the real world, and try to reduce it to language. Once this troublesome reality can be corralled into nothing more than a linguistic debate, they are in their sole area of competence and actually have a chance to win something for once in their lives. This is why some people see bad men doing bad things that must be stopped, and others see disadvantaged individuals victimized by cultural and economic paradigms of inequality that force them into involuntary self-destructive behavioral modalities that are predicated on and the result of external dynamics beyond their control or cognitive abilities, resulting in behavior modification protocols that are aimed at recovering basal self-esteem levels while providing the disadvantaged individual skill sets essential to their reintegration into the community and a return to standardized norms of societal interaction.
These are the bastards on Central Planning Committees who have never been to a machine shop, but who think they know more about running a machine shop than the person who actually runs the machine shop because they have a masters degree in economics.
Arrogance, thy name is Starbucks.
The second disturbing and disgusting trait of modern intellectuals is their transparent use of argument and appeals to authority as a means to camouflage their moral and physical cowardice and complete inability to act. These are the Uruk-hai of modern degenerate intellectualism; people who use the endless supplies of evidence cards and dueling authorities to argue and debate and extemporize and orate and rationalize and discuss and criticize so long as one never, ever actually has to do something.
That is why so many of these groups like Not in Our Name or Actors United to Win Without War are so appealing to intellectuals: it allows them to take a position as champions of Peace and Compassion without having to do something.
Not in Our Name is against the war in Iraq. Fine. Saddam was killing perhaps 20,000 people a year, and forcing millions to live in terror that exceeds that of having your screenplay put into turnaround; that in addition to all of the geopolitical turmoil. What about those people? What about those -' wait for it -' children? And how do we 'win without war' against a regime like that? More Sanctions? No sanctions? Just let him buy as many people shredders as he can afford by stealing his nation's oil wealth, and send Strongly Worded Letters the next time he decides to launch another lunatic war somewhere? You don't want war -' fine. Neither do I. But clearly, somebody has to do something. Just exactly how do we 'win' without'
Hello? Hello?
These 'intellectuals' are cowards. Action, and the consequences of action, completely paralyze them -' it literally strikes them loquacious. They become so afraid of doing something that they are reduced to a non-stop, really quite pathetic jabbering. The French, in particular, have made this into an art form that has religious overtones for them. They seem to really believe that as long as you are talking, nothing bad can happen to you. Their historical vision stretches back less than fifty years. And they say we are the unsophisticated ones, the adolescents.
Ah, oui monsieur, I can see from your very fierce expression that you intend to rape my young daughter. Well, she is quite charming, one must admit, but I could not help but notice, monsieur, the very fine quality of that trench coat you are wearing'is that a Belgian tweed? No, of course, c'est bon, but you will admit monsieur that it does appear unseasonably wet for this time of year'please, Martinique, do not struggle; Papa is trying to have a conversation with this charming gentleman' mon dieu! What a remarkable physique you have, monsieur! You must frequent the gymnasium quite regularly, do you not, mon ami..?
This is not nuance; it is not sophistication; it is not noble or refined or admirable. It is cowardice. It is fear of taking action when action needs to be taken, and the main goal of modern intellectualism is to convince people that taking action when action is called for is the mark of an idiot, a philistine or a child.
Listen, I'm all in favor of reading and studying all manner of philosophy and literature. And while social studies evidence cards cut both ways, there were not too many expert physicists out there claiming objects fall up off the table and into the air. Both intellectual study, and expert opinion, have their place. It is only when they are used beyond their limits that problems come thick and heavy.
So far, not one book or one author has seemed to write the definitive manual on how people behave and why. They in themselves have little or no predictive value whatsoever. They are useful lighthouses to mark distant positions, and they open our eyes to new viewpoints and new experiences. But one book, or one philosopher, or one revolutionary has not yet been able to pen a work that will tell us how people will behave. And yet, among these so-called elites, there are many who take the word of, say, a German expatriate, living in Britain, at the dawn of the Industrial Age, as a guide for living in an Information-Age culture dominated by an explosion of freedom and prosperity brought about precisely by ignoring what that individual wrote and doing exactly the opposite.
Don't take my word for this. Let's not sit down in the bilge arguing about whether Karl Marx or Adam Smith had the best course to freedom and happiness. Let's just go up the stairs, open a hatch, go out on deck, get out the telescope and have a look at what actually happened.
We are not blind, and we are not crippled, and the world is not a novel or a treatise or a theory or a manifesto. It exists. We can go look for ourselves. And on the way up, when those desperate elitist bastards start clutching at your ankles and implore you to stay below where it's safe and argue some more'be sure to kick those sons of bitches right in the teeth. Their blind obedience to their Big Ideas have killed more people in history than anything except disease. Boot to the the teeth, I say.
But that's just me. You've been around. You're no sap. What do you think?
Is learning to think this way really very difficult? Does it require nuance? A Ph.D? A French accent?
No, it is much simpler than that. It is so simple, in fact, that today's intellectuals are completely incapable of understanding it. It is, like the Universe, elegantly simple. E=mc2 simple.
Socialist intellectuals will tell you that Cuba is a model nation: universal free health care, near total literacy, and essentially no gap whatsoever between the rich and the poor. They call it an island paradise where brotherhood and compassion reign in stark contrast to the brutal inequalities of the heartless and racist capitalist monster to the North, ruled by it's Imperial Nazi King, who is the devious mastermind of all manner of Conspiratorial Wheels and also a moron.
Capitalist intellectuals -' and there are not many, since most of these people have jobs -' argue that Cuba is a squalid, corrupt, poverty-ridden basket case, a land of oppression and secret police and torture chambers run by a megalomaniac who practices the most idiotic, inhuman and degrading economic system ever invented.
So here we sit in the chartroom, with our competing maps. What to think?
Well, we can agree that the act of giving up your home, your friends and your family must be traumatic, especially since you will face prison, or worse, if you are caught trying to vote with your feet. And I think all can agree that placing your infant daughter and your aged mother on a raft of inner tubes would be a trifle more traumatic and horrifying than not getting enough whole cane sugar in your grande frappucino at Starbucks.
So, is Socialism a better way to live, or is Capitalism? Leave the armies of experts and intellectuals down in the bilge where they belong.
Go up on deck, get out the telescope, and answer one simple question for me and for yourself:
Which way are the rafts headed?
(To the early arrivals: I woke up with a head full of paragraphs. The middle of the chapter has some new material since I posted it late last night. Salud!)
Welcome to the Eject! Eject! Eject! commenter community. Please read and understand the following:
1. This is not a public square. This is a dinner party on personal property. Good conversation is not only tolerated but celebrated here. But the host understands the difference between dissent and disrespect, even if you do not. Louts will be ignored until the bouncers can show them the door.
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Now let's see some distributed intelligence and basic human decency! Don't make me come down there every five minutes!
Comments
I believe the correct navigational term for this is dead reckoning. And I believe you are dead on correct.
I look forward to chapter 3.
Posted by: Stephen Macklin | March 30, 2004 3:14 AM
I pray I can get my pinko-wannabe sisters to read this from start to finish. And mom, too.
Posted by: Jmarsh | March 30, 2004 4:25 AM
Exceptional work as always. I look forward to the next chapter.
Posted by: physics geek | March 30, 2004 5:49 AM
Scary. You just described 1970's era catholic school to a "T".
Just think how much fun debates and/or homework would have been if we had Google back then....
Posted by: Bob | March 30, 2004 6:29 AM
Excellent read as always - this shouls be mandatory reading in every High School in sunny Calif...for the students, too!
Posted by: PJ | March 30, 2004 7:01 AM
> Just. That. Simple.
Hoo, that got me all wistfully sentimental over the absence of Rachel Lucas - still linked here but sadly an empty set. I wish I had archived some of her work while it was available.
As a recovering liberal I recognize an element in this piece that I encountered in the late '70s when I first fell into the writings of Bucky Fuller. That is, the attitude of forsaking aphorism for reliably afforded experience. It's funny how a rebellious teen armed with a "Question Authority" t-shirt can stumble into critical thinking (as opposed to criticism). It also strikes me funny the sincerity of the war-protesting left comes from a natural longing to live without the inevitable hazards of the real world. It's funny to me because I can allow validation of the human emotional impetus (since I believe that is one thing that might possibly be universally shared) yet like all perpetually adolescent protesters the emotion is out of balance with the intellectual tools needed to actually effect positive change. They just don't have the facts, or rather, they have the facts only defined by one briefcase. Another Bucky saying pops up to mind, something like 'information is our number one most polluted resource'. It is indeed a great challenge for anyone to sift through all the nonsense and get their bearings well enough to steer their ship.
What I get from Bill is an integration of the emotional drive with common sense and a repect for those preceeding us on whose actions of integrity (and despite their failures) we build our ongoing todays and tomorrows. Thank you Bill for speaking your mind.
MB
Posted by: Mark | March 30, 2004 7:08 AM
You got index cards?!
Uh, that is, well said! Except that the reef is more than ten miles away.
Posted by: Pixy Misa | March 30, 2004 7:11 AM
I just ran across an appropriate quote in Dan
Boorstin's The Discoverers.
"Would to God your horizon may broaden every day! The people who bind themselves to systems are those who are unable to encompass the whole truth and try to catch it by the tail; a system is like the tail of truth, but truth is like a lizard; it leaves its tail in your fingers and runs away knowing full well that it will grow a new one in a twinkling."
- Ivan Turgenev to Leo Tolstoy (1856)
Intellectual, schmintellectual I know, but it just screams Student Socialist Worker's Party to me...or was that Socialist Worker's Student Party?
Working Socialist Student's Party?
Posted by: Vincent | March 30, 2004 7:41 AM
Whee, a new essay!
Nice work again, Bill. I especially like your reference to elegant simplicity in the last section. Antoine de St. Exupery got it right: "You know you have achieved perfection [in design], not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Beautiful concept -- one I manage all too rarely to achieve in my work. (I'm a computer programmer).
Posted by: Robin Munn | March 30, 2004 7:57 AM
As Steven Macklin said (above) this is Dead Reckoning, and I agree with your premise and your point of view.
However, I've delt with these chartroom efficianados, namely my mother and my best friend. What astounds me is they can look at the same real-world evidence and see something completely different. Their perception of the world before their face is distorted and refracted just as light changes angles as it cuts through the water. It makes an oar seem to cant off at an agle, and makes the bottom of the sea look deceptively shallow. Can we blame them for insisting the water is too shallow to cross BEFORE we tear out our keel? We have to show them the index cards from the UF physics department (as a Gator, I thank you for using my alma mater in your examples, by the way!) showing that water distorts vision and you have to MEASURE the depth. They will still insist they can SEE it is shallow and we are fools to try to cross.
Besides, they have logic on their side... Cheney worked for Haliburton, and has rich and powerful friends on their side. Both Presidents Bush are deeply involved financially in the oil industry and so are their friends. Iraq is a major exporter of oil THERFORE invading Iraq MUST BE specifically about the oil. Gas Prices are at peak levels, THEREFORE this MUST BE a Bush/Cheny/Haliburton conspiracy! It's clear as the water of the Carribean! How can you refute that? Don't dazzle me with FACTS because Moveon.org has rooms full of index cards refuting your facts!
Posted by: Lampster | March 30, 2004 8:21 AM
Mr. Whittle, once again you have knocked the ball out of the park. I have several people in mind who are going to read this, if I have to lead them to it kicking and screaming. (That's actually a lot of fun if you do it right.)
Posted by: Steve S | March 30, 2004 8:25 AM
"I was kind of a dork in High School."
Man, it's a good thing you warned me to sit down before I read that. I pictured you as a former jock for sure. Of course, since I was a band geek myself, an AV nerd, a member of the Chess Club, and the co-founder of the two-man "Cygnus Astronomical Society" at age 17 (we almost had three members, but Bill wouldn't join), a Master Debater like yourself really WAS a "jock" by comparison.
Or maybe it was just the Captain Bill "Strapping Buck" McWhittle photo-insert up there in the top-right corner.
But you were a dork? Really? Shattered all my allusions.
Hee-hee!
But seriously folks -- great essay (or is it technically a "chapter?"). This ought to spark some interesting counter-arguments -- like, "what if you're up on-deck, checking out the passing shoreline, and you see some "mounds" in silhouette (the sun's setting behind them, let's say), and no observational or experiential evidence can tell you whether those are low hills close-up, or huge rounded mountains in the distance -- maybe they're landfills, or just a couple of circus tents where the Democratic Convention is being held (kinda' the same thing, I guess) -- you just can't tell. So, do we HAVE to jump overboard and swim to shore every time just to find out for sure, or are there times when it's okay to just accept the most popular map's depiction? Especially if it's details about an area where you'll never be making landfall anyway."
(I'm not sure how much longer we can "sail" with this map-reading analogy either)
Can't wait to see where this goes in the next chapter.
GHS
Posted by: GreatHairySilverback | March 30, 2004 8:47 AM
Bill -
Little did I know, back in the previous comments thread, I was getting a free preview of Chapter II. I like the form of a collection of serial essays each building upon the other. Is that your plan for the entire book? Also liked the metaphor of "evidence cards". We all have our box full of evidence cards. Sometimes those evidence cards are good, even necessary things. I take Quantum Physics mostly on faith. While almost anyone can see the Standard Model's predictive power, few of us have the mental horsepower to actually work out the underlying math and prove it (there's only so many minds of the caliber of Richard Feynmans or Stephan Hawking; unfortunately I ain't one of them).
But sometimes those evidence cards are dangerously wrong; for instance "The Federal government invests my Social Security taxes in a trust fund, which will provide for me in my old age." Replace "Federal government" with "Enron", and "Social Security taxes" with "401k contributions", and the statement would be equally valid.
Warning - stretching metaphor to near elastic limit.
GHS -
We don't have to swim out there every time. But we can sometimes send out an inflatable motor launch. Or we can calculate distance & height by triangulation. If we bring a surveyor with us, maybe we can fill in the spots on the charts that are empty but for apocryphal warnings like "Here there be monsters"
J
Posted by: Jumper | March 30, 2004 10:00 AM
I hate to pick fights with the previous commenters but dead reckoning navigation is the exact opposite of looking to see where you are. In dead reckoning you simply draw a line on the chart according to your indicated course and indicated speed. Dead reckoning ignores headwinds or crosswinds, currents and tides. It tells us where we would be absent any real-world conditions.
My car has a speedometer, compass and clock. Theoreticly I don't ever need to look out the windshield. My map tells me that I'm 22 miles from the nearest Wal-Mart and it's southeast. How about I paint over all the windows and windshield and let's convoy to Wally World? Better yet, how about you dead reckoning fans try being pedestrians?
Posted by: Peter | March 30, 2004 10:13 AM
Or, we can mark the spot, have several people look for themselves, and as our perspective changes with the forward motion of our craft, we can all take a deep breath and say, "Oh, those are just sandbars," for example.
You're right. This metaphor is getting stretched. My point is about applying shared perspective. Reality isn't relative. It is what it is, no matter how much other people may want it to be what they wish. (Reminds me of Bill's essay, "Magic," when he shared the anecdote about being able to point out that the "UFO's" were nothing more than a flock of geese.)
Posted by: Linda | March 30, 2004 10:17 AM
Hey hey, Jumper... I'm big on parallax effects too, and I've lived a whole lifetime based on actually DOING just about everything I've ever had a curiosity about. So "experience" sits REAL high on my personal priority list. But sometimes the combination of having an intense experience, while skipping the inconvenience of digging up all the relevant "maps" ahead of time, can lead one to some pretty odd conclusions. Or does it?
We discussed this in the comment stream for "MAGIC" (man, we need to get those old comments turned back on again), about the "experiential EVIDENCE" behind firewalks and crystal pendulums and UFOs and whatever else fell out of the woodwork in that discussion. And while we don't need to dredge all that stuff up again, I have to admit that, despite my experiences to the contrary, there's a lot to be said for having some well-researched "maps" before venturing into those convoluted river deltas (yeh, still toying with the mapping analogy here).
That's kinda' what I was feeling out in that previous post -- just how reliable a determiner IS personal experience? Just 'cause you SAW it or touched it or DID it, does that mean it's what you think it is? How much misinformation or naivete did you bring INTO that exploration with you? And if you're going to include a little "research" before you take the plunge, what or who is the official TRUE SOURCE for that research? What baggage or bias do THEY bring with their conclusions?
Sounds like however you approach anything, you're still just weighing odds, or maybe just pros and cons -- how much do you believe this source, this "map?" And how valid is a personal experience, if its conclusions are based on a complete ignorance of the subject?
I mean, to use a tired old example, if you didn't know any better, based on personal experience alone, why WOULDN'T you believe the "authorities" who claimed that the SUN went 'round the EARTH? Looking at it yourself, wouldn't that claim make more sense than the reverse? Wrong choice of "authority," wrong conclusion from "evidence."
And politically speaking, just because history shows that some system didn't work the first time it was tried, does that mean that it COULDN'T work?
(I'm not arguing on behalf of any of these points here -- just throwing them out as kindling)
Whatcha' think?
GHS
Posted by: GreatHairySilverback | March 30, 2004 10:35 AM
Bill,
A tiny nit to pick in an excellent piece of writing. In the first sentence of your seventh paragraph, you use the words "a millenia". The word millenia is plural, meaning multiple thousands of years. The earlier part of the sentence makes it clear you actually mean "millenium."
And you thought you were a dork?
Terry
Posted by: TerryB | March 30, 2004 10:38 AM
If there are any other policy debate wonks out there, you'll appreciate this one- my hapless partner proved totally unable to indict the Affirmative's case, and while we had presented a Counterplan, they shredded it with evidence of the horrible disadvantages that would occur if it were adopted. With no evidence and nothing left to do, I calmly rose, turned to the judges, and said "We concede that our counterplan would result in the horrible consequences noted by our opponents. We refer you to their arguments that their plan is far more effective than ours. Therefore, adoption of their plan would bring even worse disadvantages. Thank you."
We lost, but they gave me points for going down in style.
Posted by: Rico Suave | March 30, 2004 10:39 AM
If there are any other policy debate wonks out there, you'll appreciate this one- my hapless partner proved totally unable to indict the Affirmative's case, and while we had presented a Counterplan, they shredded it with evidence of the horrible disadvantages that would occur if it were adopted. With no evidence and nothing left to do, I calmly rose, turned to the judges, and said "We concede that our counterplan would result in the horrible consequences noted by our opponents. We refer you to their arguments that their plan is far more effective than ours. Therefore, adoption of their plan would bring even worse disadvantages. Thank you."
We lost, but they gave me points for going down in style.
Posted by: Rico Suave | March 30, 2004 10:39 AM
To Peter, thanks for pointing out my error. You are correct about Dead Reckoning. I believed the previous poster without any evidence as to his credentials. I guess I learned nothing from Bill's chapter! ;)
To GHS, I'm buying your arguement as well (geeze! I guess I'll never learn!) If someone has a good chart you can reference, why march off blindly on your own instincts?
One of the biggest frustrations of my life is that I was one of those dorks in high school that listened to the teacher, worked hard, stayed out of trouble, got decent grades, went to college, got a degree, got a decent job, have 2.5 kids and a house with a 2-car garage and I'm generally content. I go to church every Sunday, in one of those "established religions" so I guess that makes me one of those religious conservatives!
I'm constantly bumping into people who hated school, rejected authority, did drugs, didn't finish school, don't go to church, can't stay in a stable relationship, hate their parents, and are generally miserable people. And THEY lecture ME about how wrong I am and how morally bankrupt my point of view is! THEY are the enlightened ones because THEY are walking their own path, charting their own course. They don't "march in lock step" like us conservatives! Oh, THANK YOU for pointing out the error of my ways! CLEARLY your lifestyle is superior!
Posted by: Lampster | March 30, 2004 11:47 AM
Nice piece as always Bill.
I like Mark's use of 'recovering liberal'--as soon as I commit to recovery, I'll adopt it. Are there meetings?
I was a dork too, but it helps with the use of analogy (and metaphore, simile, yada yada yada)
Seems to me when I'm out boating, you often get glare reflecting from the sun on the water, kinda like the blindness of following celebrity endorcement. Wear your polaroids and consider the source!
Variances in the atmosphere can lead to disturbances that produce fog and mist, kinda like the difficulty I have in hearing liberal views from the college atmosphere (I work with instructors and students from 6 schools) and then hearing the views expressed here. Awefully hard to see through the mist. *Note to self, develop rhetoric radar.
The pendulum effect tells us public view will swing back and forth on a topic, the serverity dependent on the pressures too and fro, much as the waves in the ocean are produced (mainly) by the winds. Must be a good idea to make sure the boat is level when doing your measurements.
Carry a good star almanac; guaranteed to be one of the most accurate maps for used in making your own terrestrial one.
Any suggestions for me on a good star atlas? Metaphorically speaking?
Posted by: russ v | March 30, 2004 11:48 AM
The technical term for navigating by looking out the window is Pilotage. Look out window, find landmarks, compare to map. Very simple. Particularly when the alternative is to crash-land in a forest.
Which is the problem. Take a look at the psuedo-intellectuals on the left, and you will find that they are lacking in any sort of studies that require real rigor. Custard-heads study Education, Literature, Philosophy, and Communications, maybe Economics and History. Because they can't handle Mathematics, or any of the hard sciences. Infinitely less Engineering. As ADM Rickover said, "Technology has a discipline all its own." And discipline is something the pseudo-intellectuals can't handle.
Posted by: Mike McDaniel | March 30, 2004 11:50 AM
I just awoke with a headful of unfinshed argument. There is an entirely new section about two-thirds of the way down for all of you fast responders.
Posted by: Bill Whittle | March 30, 2004 11:53 AM
Mike got it exactly right -- looking out the window to see where you are is indeed "pilotage." That's what we should eb teaching.
"Dead Reckoning" is actually short for "deduced reckoning" and it is what you use when there are no recognizable landmarks. (Kansas should change their mascot from the Jayhawks to the Dead Reckoners)
You people are a credit to this website. What a sharp, polite and bright bunch of dorks you are.
Oh, and I fixed "millenia." Thanks!
Posted by: Bill Whittle | March 30, 2004 12:01 PM
Here's what you said rephrased from a scientific viewpoint:
Robert Heinlein (throughout his work) makes the useful distinction between scientists and scholars. Scholars ("button sorters" in Heinlein's pithy words) preserve, correlate, publish, and debate the works of authorities. Scientists design and conduct experiments. In a better world, the two are complementary and need to feed off each other. The danger for scholars is that it's easy to replace experiment with more scholarship and detach from reality altogether. Once the cocoon has closed around such a group, the rest follows from simple economic and political self-defense: reality (through scientific experiment) can burst your bubble, but if we "deconstruct" it, it can't contradict our scholarship anymore...
Once we get past the anger, it's important to remember that good scholars are valuable. They just need to be anchored by facts, by data, by - uh - reality. It's only when the chart-keepers turn medieval - debating the perfect words of Aristotle rather than the world around them - that we need to thrown them out. Hard.
Cheers
-- perry
Posted by: Perry The Cynic | March 30, 2004 12:12 PM
Welcome back Mr. Whittle. I had come to fear over the past several that a good mind that had been doing good work had been distracted. This is your medium and I hope that you will again use it to develop and spread your thoughts. You are a perceptive observer and have an uncommon knack for cutting to the core of issues. And then you top it off by explaining yourself in terms that command attention. Keep building good widgets and taking care of your customers - the rest will come.
Posted by: homer jones | March 30, 2004 12:20 PM
You know I have alway disliked the term "Intellectual" and those whom adopted it for themselves. Personally, I prefer the term "A thinking person." Your basic intelligence is only useful when you use your common sense as a fulcrum and your experience as a lever. Then, you can use your intelligence to move the load.
An intellectual , it seems to me, tries to move the load without the use of lever or fulcrum. Some can do it. Many cannot. Most won't even try. Mr. Moore, it seems, would waddle [my very own cheap shot] away quickly from the idea of work. From my readings of the biluous Chomsky, I find that he wishes merely to talk the load into shifting. Quite a trick, if he can do it. But I feel it is more like 600,000, not merely 6000. You can see six thousand feet away, but not 600,000. I don't think he can even spot reality when it jumps out and bitch slaps him.
Frankly, I'm on the edge of my seat, waiting for Chapter III. Keep up the fire, sir!
Posted by: Sapper Mike | March 30, 2004 12:41 PM
Damn fine work, Bill.
Posted by: Evil Otto | March 30, 2004 12:45 PM
The fact that you were in Debate doesn't surprise me in the least. Each of your essays, tangents and all, is constructed in such a way as to emphasize or prove one particular point. Moreover, they are well crafted to acheive that end.
I would not be good at debate, and unfortunately it took me until after college to truly understand why. (Maybe someday I'll write a post about it.) Which makes me grateful that there are writers such as you to whom I can point people and say, "He says it better than I ever could."
Posted by: B. Durbin | March 30, 2004 12:52 PM
GHS -
[...]there's a lot to be said for having some well-researched "maps" before venturing into those convoluted river deltas.
That's kind of what I was trying to suggest by saying that some "evidence cards" are good, or even necessary. I don't have the mental horsepower to solve the equations of the Quantum Mechanic's Standard Model. But it predicts that a semi-conductor will work, whereas classical physics predicts that it won't. My computer works, ergo, I accept Quantum Mechanics as a reliable map in the realms where it's shown to be effective, in spite of the fact that it suggests things that are totally nonsensical based on our everyday experience, (such as cats that are neither alive or dead, but in an indeterminate state). In the subatomic realm, I gladly yeild to the authority of Hiesenberg, Shroedinger, Feynman, et al.
With the motor launch, we can have a couple of guys scoot out ahead and see if the way is copacetic, whether or not our maps are correct without risking the entire ship. Analagous to the point man on patrol, or the vangaurd of an army scouting out ahead, so that if there's trouble, the entire army doesn't stick its head in a meatgrinder. That's one of the beauties of Federalism (the way the founders understood that word). California can try every new fad that comes down the pike. The rest of the country can watch, and pick up the useful ideas, and laugh at the ones that don't work so good.
based on personal experience alone, why WOULDN'T you believe the "authorities" who claimed that the SUN went 'round the EARTH?
A mental model of a earth-centric universe successfully predicts the movement of the sun and moon (and even the planets, if your measurements aren't too precise). Such a theory can tell you when to plant your wheat, when to plant your onions and cabbage, when to dig up the turnips, and when to hide from the dead because it's Sam Hain (Halloween). It's an effective theory. It correctly describes your universe.
Now if you invent telescopes, and astrolabs and such things, and you start making detailed observations of the motions of the planets, suddenly you find your model no longer predicts the motion of the planets. The old earth-centric theory's become incomplete, because it doesn't account for the newly observed retrograde motions of the planets. So it's modified to state that the planets move in irregular little micro-circles. Then one day, somebody realizes that this complex and inexplicable combination of motions can easily be described by a simple system of the planets in elliptical orbits around the sun, regardless that it's not the simplest description of the world visible to the naked eye alone.
Lacking perfect information, we have to settle for a best-fit.
Posted by: Jumper | March 30, 2004 1:09 PM
OUTSTANDING!
I was also a debater and remember well the topic in question. Prison overcrowding.
We also scored numerous wins by playing the common sense card.
A great topic.
Posted by: Gonzo | March 30, 2004 2:15 PM
Mark and russ v,
you're not alone. I've been using that moniker since last October, and the crowd here's been very congenial and understanding about my lapses.
GHS,
pleased to see you join the fray so quickly (c:
Posted by: A Recovering Liberal | March 30, 2004 2:33 PM
This is why I believe the term "political science" is a misnomer. The study of humans, their society, and their government can certainly be at least a soft science- but political science as it is currently studied is lacking HALF what it needs. Namely, it is all theory. And what's really ridiculous is that there is already a built-in system of study for its experimental branch- we call it "history".
If poli sci people had to spend as much time on history as science students have to spend in the lab, we might see a significant uptick in the quality of university output on the subject.
Posted by: LabRat | March 30, 2004 2:34 PM
Heavy duty, dude.
Posted by: Tim | March 30, 2004 2:54 PM
Awesome as always Bill! APPLAUSE APPLAUSE!
I also see that you either frequent fark.com or you are just a Star Wars fan from way back - or perhaps both!
More, more, please!
Posted by: Steve | March 30, 2004 3:01 PM
Where can I send my money for the book :)
Posted by: bjbarron | March 30, 2004 4:22 PM
Re: Political Science
A senior member of my department once said, "Have you ever noticed that anything that calls itself a science, isn't?"
I'm in computer science.
BTW, yet another "Good Job, Mr. Whittle," as if you needed to hear it again.
Posted by: david | March 30, 2004 4:56 PM
Another one knocked out of the park! I'd point out that when academics have a good description of reality, ie. physicists or engineering professors, they love interacting in the real world. It's when they have a very bad description that their ventures into the real-world leave a bad taste in their mouths.
Col. John Boyd gave an excellent treatment of the concept of mental models of reality in his essay "Creation and Destruction", to focus on how intelligent beings keep in touch with reality, and how they get fooled ont he battlefield, among other things.
The key idea is that you have a mental map of something which may or may not conform to reality. If your map is wrong new sets of observations tend to just make it more and more complicated, with more and more exceptions and alterations piling up (entropy builds). The map overall makes poor predictions about the real world, and becomes a collection of ad-hoc fixes.
A smart person, when confronted with evidence that their mental model (or worldview) is inadequate, tears it apart and tries to assemble the pieces in a structure that can better explain reality. Emperor Misha and I were discussing this over some beers, and the question becomes "How can we get other liberals to undergo this "destruction" process so they can move on to "creation" and rebuild a worldview that bears a resemblence to actual reality?
The socialist worldview was literally created by a guy who didn't do any form of work, and didn't even like workers. Marx was the prototypical wackc-job who holes up in a cabin somewhere and writes a manifesto, without a single reality-check anywhere. Engles had to translate Marx into something half-way understandable, which just made it stupid instead of both stupid and unreadable.
With this concocted fantasy as the scaffolding, the liberals have build a bizarre and complicated model that leads them to make predictions like Chomsky's, usually off by several orders of magnitude. Yet whenever one of them rejects the model and adopts a mental model corresponding to conservatives, which has good predictive value, they are dismissed by those remaining on the left as a capitalist hack, sell-out, and anti-revolutionary traitor, the only characterization available in the Marxist model, since it doesn't include the possiblity that it might be wrong.
It reminds me a bit of those on the left who keep insisting that people should finally try socialism, as if it hasn't been tried over and over in countless countries, always producing abysmal failure. Part of Marx's message was that his system was "new, perfect, yet untried". That was back in the 1800's. They should get an update for goodness sake.
Apologies for the long comment. I just got on a roll.
Posted by: George Turner | March 30, 2004 5:16 PM
My mother took debate in high school. She told me not to take it because, "The only thing they teach you is how to win an argument. They don't care if you're right or wrong."
Posted by: Merrijane | March 30, 2004 5:19 PM
Another aviation comparison:
"Partial Panel"
Flying based on reference to instruments gives information on where you are, where ou are going, how fast, etc.
Like a bad map, instruments can give wrong information. This requires the pilot to fly using only the instruments that are determined to be working (hence, partial panel).
This requires a living, breathing, thinking human to evaluate all of the available data and determine what data is garbage and what is true. Identify, adapt, overcome. One then must place large post-it notes over the bad instruments and keep going.
Trust, but verify!
Posted by: Horst Graben | March 30, 2004 5:19 PM
Great as ussual. By the way... who says being on a high school debate team is dorky! (Never mind the fact that that I am on it right now). One of the mottos in my program at school is that the jocks will work for the nerds some day. (Or when we're President)
- Potus36
Posted by: Katie W | March 30, 2004 6:48 PM
Excellent work of real-life thought.
I like the Admiral Ackbar thing...straight from Return of the Jedi.
Posted by: Kenny | March 30, 2004 7:05 PM
Excellent, a still life of the frozen 'elite' mindset.
Loved it!
Posted by: Chris Muir | March 30, 2004 7:20 PM
Nicely writ, Bill Whittle.
Your observations reduce to the kind of pound-my-head-on-the-desk simplifications by which the world progresses in fits.
What really bothers me about the self-proclaimed intellectuals, is their tendency in the face of actual paradigm-busting data to try to figure out a way to save their theory instead of accepting it's fallacy and turning their efforts towards something productive.
They want to convince us that the rafts are merely off course, or full of naive people who don't realize how evil the U.S. really is and how good they had it back in their mud huts.
It is thoroughly frightening, the belief that the only problem with Socialism/Marxism/Communism is that it just hasn't been done RIGHT yet. If "I" was running it, things would be perfect.
And they say the Left is anti-religion. I guess I could agree in a certain respect: Blind Faith isn't really religion. It is the abidication of choice, and the enslavement of the soul.
Keep up the good work Bill. You and the large group of dorks... er.. thoughtful posters.. help reassure me that there are other people out there carrying rational debate to our less fact-checking aquaintences.
Posted by: krakatoa | March 30, 2004 8:14 PM
Damn Whittle, you actually brought a tear to my eye.
Posted by: Holly | March 30, 2004 9:26 PM
Good stuff.
You had a better topic. Mine (in HS) was increased regulation of the media.
But I was on the leading edge in college. Used the UPI newswire on "The Source" for extemp. That pissed some coaches off.
Posted by: Richard R | March 30, 2004 11:09 PM
The jocks will work for the nerds "some day"?
Unless they're that exceedingly rare uberjock that is good enough to have a career in professional sports, the jocks generally start working for the nerds out of high school or out of college, depending on how rich their parents are- or how smart they are under the outer layer of jockiness.
As has been pointed out, high school is not a remotely accurate representation of adult reality, it is a world unto itself- and its rules not only don't apply to adult life, they are often directly counter to what adulthood will really be like. This is why people whose lifetime high point was high school generally will never go anywhere at all except down.
Posted by: LabRat | March 31, 2004 1:01 AM
Thanks Bill, nicely written - this is going somewhere...
As to "So far, not one book or one author has seemed to write the definitive manual on how people behave and why"
Yes she has. "Atlas Shrugged", Ayn Rand.
Posted by: Michael J | March 31, 2004 1:02 AM
Thanks Bill, nicely written - this is going somewhere...
As to "So far, not one book or one author has seemed to write the definitive manual on how people behave and why"
Yes she has. "Atlas Shrugged", Ayn Rand.
Posted by: Michael J | March 31, 2004 1:02 AM
Well, now I'm not so P.O.'d about not being able to sleep. Well worth the loss of a few hours of shuteye to be able to read this hot off the presses, so to speak.
Bill, I admire your writing skills more than I can say. Ditto to your reasoning abilities and to your optimism. But I'm afraid that our Ship of State has spent the last sixty years or more neglecting essential maintenance and sailing through shallow seas, grinding over reefs. We've robbed vital systems of essential components in order to build devices that serve no function but to amuse or pacify the passengers. We've yanked up deck planking to feed the boilers not to make way, but to keep the people in steerage warm. The crew has gotten surly and superior, forgetting that their purpose is to serve the ship, not themselves. Now we stand likely to run aground and break our keel because the idiots at the helm and down in engineering wouldn't bother to look out the ports or listen to those of us up in the crows nest. They were too busy arguing over the charts. It almost doesn't matter who's at the helm now, because it barely answers. I cannot be as optimistic as you are.
And to Michael J, as pertains to Rand, her perceptions as to people's behavior is largely accurate, but I'd like to quote another blogger concerning her:
Tellingly, Rand was unable to live according to her ideals. This is part of what makes Rand so disagreeable; the almost hysterical denial of subjectivity's inevitable, essential role in our lives. And it makes her not only disagreeable, but wrong. - Dipnut from IsntapunditClose, but no ceegar.
Posted by: Kevin Baker | March 31, 2004 2:45 AM
"Which way are the rafts headed?" Brilliant, sir!
Posted by: Bill St. Clair | March 31, 2004 3:40 AM
I always thought "dead reckoning" meant that if you reckoned wrong, you were dead (RAH, I believe).
Thanks for Chapter 2- great work.
Posted by: Phil Winsor | March 31, 2004 7:47 AM
Another in a long line of excellent essays.
It's amazing how they just keep getting better and better.
Keep it up Mr. Whittle.
And let us know when you're coming to Chicago.
Chris
Posted by: Chris | March 31, 2004 8:51 AM
Amazing. And excellent.
hln
Posted by: hln | March 31, 2004 10:00 AM
I think things are much worse than merely having an incorrect map: the _methods_ by which people make their maps are wrong, thus guaranteeing that any accuracy in their maps is just blind luck.
To put it in more technical terms, politics today is a mess because the ideas forming the foundation of it are a mess.
The principles for the proper behavior of individuals who choose to live in societies (politics) depend on the principles for the proper behavior of individuals as such (morality). That in turn depends on the principles for acquiring knowledge (epistemology), which depends upon the basic nature of the universe as a whole (metaphysics).
Politics today is a mess because the underlying morality is wrong, and that because the underlying epistemology is wrong, and that because the underlying metaphysics is wrong.
This, unfortunately, applies equally to the left _and_ the right. We will not see any real improvement until the left throws out their subjectivism, and the right their religion.
As Bill's essay says, checking our maps against reality is essential. That won't help, however, if one's "vision" is clouded. That is most certainly the case today on the left _and_ the right. That is what explains why we get socialism in the U.S. regardless of whether we have Bill Clinton or George Bush in the White House.
Mark Peters
P.S. - Regarding what "Dipnut from Isntapundit" said about Objectivism: that shows conclusively that he has no clue what that philosophy actually means. Based on 24 years of experience with it, I know that it is anything _but_ sterile.
The so-called "hysterical denial of subjectivity's inevitable, essential role in our lives" is in fact a _legitimate_ denial of the validity of subjectivity as such. That this fellow would write that merely shows he doesn't even know what "subjectivity" is, let alone what Objectivism's answer to it is.
This isn't a forum for discussing Objectivism, however, so I won't say anything more. I just can't stand idly by while the words of an ignorant man slander the philosophy I live my life by.
Posted by: Mark Peters | March 31, 2004 10:11 AM
I really enjoyed your anti-intellectual screed, but it occurred to m that only intellectuals will be reading it. A good definition of an intellectual might be "somebody who enjoys reading screeds!"
Perhaps the same observation could be made about intelectuals as has often been made about lawyers: ninety-five percent of them give the rest a bad name...
Posted by: Petergrynch | March 31, 2004 10:32 AM
I think Bill gives the left too much credit by calling them "intellectuals". The left stopped being intellectual in any important sense of that word decades ago, and if the full meaning of that term is kept in mind, centuries.
Somebody who lives only in his head is not an intellectual, he's just an inventor of fantasy worlds. Somebody who lives only outside his head is just a piece of meat.
A true intellectual recognizes that reality is what it is, independent of the human mind, that the mind is a means of awareness and understanding of reality, that it works in a specific way and not others, and that human life depends upon discovering that way and using it. He takes all of that _seriously_ and looks at reality (including humans), figures out its nature, conceptualizes it, and then guides his actions by the results - on principle.
Drop any part of that, and a person ceases being an intellectual. The left is built entirely on the premise that reality either doesn't exist at all, or humans create it rather than figure it out. That premise makes the left inherently *anti-intellectual*.
When politicians wear lapel buttons reading "Reality is negotiable", or say "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." they're not kidding.
Mark Peters
Posted by: Mark Peters | March 31, 2004 1:29 PM
twin to picked nit: both the singular and the plural form of the word millennium have two n's.
Posted by: linsee | March 31, 2004 2:23 PM
Great essay. Two quibbles with some of the commenters:
Not all the intellectuals of the left are unable to handle Mathematics: Chomsky did some nice work in categorising rewrite systems for languages which is actually useful in computer science. Look-up "Chomsky normal form" or "Chomsky hierarchy". That said, I thought he was a dingbat when I knew him in the early 60's, and my opinion of him has gone down considerably since then.
As to the difference between other peoples maps and your own experience, recall the blind men and the elephant. You need to balance other people's maps with your own experience. Excessive reliance on either is dangerous.
Unlike some of my fellow dorks, I have no corrections for either spelling or grammar.
Posted by: Oscar | March 31, 2004 3:26 PM
Great work, again.
Thanks, Bill.
Posted by: Russ | March 31, 2004 5:29 PM
Great Work, Bill . . . Keep it coming!
Posted by: Stickles | March 31, 2004 5:41 PM
"Coffee house intellectuals..."
I've been using that description for 15 years and I always got a weird look. They are out there...throw in a clove cigarette, a black beret and you have your stereotypical coffee house intellectual. On sunny days, since they aren't used to the light, what with all the time spent reading books about philosphy in their dark, philisophical rooms, they wear John Lennon glasses. And they love to say this line: "Why do you think they call it "HIS' story?" Oi vey, someone stab me in the neck right now.
Anyhoo...Bill, you have written, again far more eloquently, something I have been trying to get across for a very long time. It doesn't have to be that complicated. I have noticed that people LOVE to throw out their 10 dollar words they memorized out of the dictionary and thesauruses....(thesaurusi?)...and how they love to point to passage or quote after passage or quote and announce author after author...on and on and on...blah blah blah...when the answer is really, REALLY simple and if they would just get past it all they could see that.
There is definitely something to be said for reading a lot and being book smart.
But there is also something to be said about life experiences and lessons.
I don't understand why so many push aside a life experience to be less than something they read out of a book.
Sometimes I wonder if you have put any thought into how you are going to market this book so that people who need to read it, will. I'll tell you right now, if I EVER catch a coffe house intellectual reading this book...I will have new, refreshed hope for some people in this country.
Posted by: serenity | March 31, 2004 6:40 PM
Does anyone have a citation for the Chomsky's assertion that a war in Afghanistan would result in "3 million Afghan casualties?"
I've been lurking for some time, and this is my first post. Thank you for taking the time to provide such powerful insights.
Posted by: Ted Engel | March 31, 2004 8:29 PM
I wonder how many left-wing bloggers were jocks in high school.
Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger | March 31, 2004 8:59 PM
Was anyone aware that the word "dork" actually means "penis?" Heh.
Seriously. Take a look.
Posted by: Lord Duppy | March 31, 2004 9:00 PM
Wow, keep it coming.
On Rand - She saved me from going insane from the bunk I was feed in the L.A. and Fairfax County school systems in the 70's and the Liberation Theology smoking Jesuits who abused method and good intentions as they tried to deconstuct history for me as a college student. I knew something was wrong, was it me? No, it was just that the life experience and views of the son of a Navy Master Chief were a little more grounded in reality. She was a liberating breath of fresh air, as was the essay.
Posted by: IbnHuq | March 31, 2004 9:36 PM
Bill,
From what you've written I would guess you have already read Paul Johnson's marvelous book "Intellectuals". If not, you should do so at the first oppertunity. It would add a lot to what you've said here, and you won't be able to put it dowm.
Posted by: XXX | March 31, 2004 10:16 PM
wow
I mean WOW
oh my god - you put into words what I was thinking, and with great clarity
I mean this is a GREAT explanation of what's going on nowadays with intellectuals
You should think about publishing this
also, submit it to www.capmag.com
I'm going to keep this essay and hold on to it, maybe forever
Also, I like the way you pointed out that Capitalism works better and that socialists are, well, just plain stupid
by the way, what did you mean about the central planning board/machine shop/economist thing? do you not like economists? economics (and it's PROVEN concepts - it's not just stupid theories) shows that capitalism works and socialism doesn't, so I find it kind of funny that anybody can be socialist. I mean, you only need to know the littlest bit of econ to realize that socialism (and Marx) are just plain stupid.
Have you ever learned economics? you'd like it. It's what you were talking about - no obfuscated theories that don't match reality, it's just plain, un-watered-down reality - you can whine and complain and theorize all you want, but you can't refute the simple realities presented. "Principles of Economics, Third Edition" by N. Gregory Mankiw or "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell are good starter econ books.
Posted by: wow | April 1, 2004 1:03 AM
Very well said!
I would throw in Milton Friedmans "Free to Choose" as mandatory reading -I am requiring my offspring to read the book before they will be graduated. I recall waking up late Sunday morning following a bender, I flipped on the local PBS station and watched most of the series "Free to Choose" (this was before the series was banned). I was hooked! There is a series that should be required viewing of every person that consider themselves educated.
Posted by: yatalli | April 1, 2004 6:44 AM
Nice work, Bill.
I was a debater as well -- collegiate level. In high school I competed in oratory and poetry.
In debate you quickly learn that emotion will not win you anything at all. You have to have logic and facts and a coherent argument. Perhaps this is why debaters are so often conservative. Liberal thought isn't thought at all -- it's emotion. And it won't get you that champion trophy.
Posted by: Bonnie | April 1, 2004 7:16 AM
Brilliant as usual! Great work. I can hardly wait for the next segment.
Posted by: Rick | April 1, 2004 7:56 AM
The waist-high had ceased also, giving place to a sensation of soaking, temporary rest
Posted by: skelaxin | April 1, 2004 8:34 AM
Bill, you've yet again reached your high standards. Well done!
Posted by: David Beatty | April 1, 2004 8:47 AM
Spot on, as usual. Great essay, and it clarifies what I had already suspected.
BTW, this is exactly why 'intellectuals' are spittin' mad at GWB. He may not have had the best GPA at Yale, and he may not know how to pronounce 'nukular', but here is a guy who knew to throw open the hatch after 9/11, take a look around, and order a major change in direction. Not intellectual, but definitely smart, like all those red states that the blue states just canNOT comprehend.
$.02
Posted by: kelley | April 1, 2004 8:48 AM
To Kevin Baker, good analogy extension. However, I would say we got a new captain and some new officers, but the crew is planning a mutiny. The passengers are happy burning up the decking and are mad at the new Captain who wants to keep the decking to walkon (the nerve!) Now someone is floating mines in our way, threatening to sink the boat. We can't keep sailing blindly along anymore. We need to do some piloting and have a diligent watch keeping an eye out for those mines.
That's one less crewman to pander to the passengers, but they could be a bit more self sufficient anyway!
Posted by: Lampster | April 1, 2004 10:57 AM
Wonderful, except.....
The Uruk-hai (Tolkien) never debated anything, they existed only to pillage and destroy. I think you mean the Bandar-Log (Kipling), the monkey tribe who tore things down with every intention of building something better, but somehow never got round to it. The Bandar-Log, like most Socialists, were incapable of a two step process.
Posted by: robert in england | April 1, 2004 12:04 PM
Forgive me if I'm displaying my ignorance (I'm better-versed in the famines, massacres, and nuclear disasters they perpetrated than with their thinking), but didn't the Soviets, like the early 20th century anarchists, beleive that as soon as they successfully abolished personal property, and killed anyone with too many possessions, a miracle would occur, or mankind would evolve, or something to that effect?
They didn't need to think about step two. It would just happen. Human character would change once property was abolished.
Posted by: Jumper | April 1, 2004 1:02 PM
Quote Source Please: (Thanks)
Noam Chomsky predicted, in his even, intellectual, authoritarian, tenured manner, that ". if the US went to war in Afghanistan after 9/11 the result would be 3 million Afghan casualties."
I'm here at UCLA (history major), where Chomsky is worshiped, I could use some help.
Bill
Posted by: Bill | April 1, 2004 1:59 PM
Bill, I commend your discovery of the Chomsky Coefficient.
Posted by: Aaron's Rantblog | April 1, 2004 2:58 PM
Another fine one, my friend.
Posted by: addison | April 1, 2004 3:20 PM
I find it truly amazing that someone who claims to be intelligent doesnt know the difference between socialism and communism. Cuba is not a socialist state.
Is there any country in this world that is a true capitalist state? despite what you think the US is not a true capitalist state.
You are a good writer Bill but sometimes it is good to know the facts before you write.
Posted by: Lars Kapa | April 1, 2004 3:25 PM
Bonnie:
Correct. And hence the famous Winston Churchill quip “If you're not a liberal when you're in your 20’s you haven't got a heart; if you're not a conservative by the time you're 40 you haven't got a brain"
Posted by: Doug | April 1, 2004 4:12 PM