The Death of the Public Intellectual

The Death of the Public Intellectual does not signal that we are all brain-dead

Ideas have power. Ideas can change minds or reinforce tightly held beliefs and prejudices. Ideas can capture the public’s imagination. I’m not talking about sound bites or the flagrant manipulation of sentiment by appealing to racism, fear, or hysteria of one brand or another. At the risk of sounding overblown or pretentious, I will put forward a few ideas that might have legs: democracy and fascism, climate responsibility, the ethical life, the role of imagination, and spirituality. These topics interest me, and I would hope that joining in an intellectual conversation, sharing and discussing our ideas in a civil way, might help us find a way forward.

Sadly, this kind of conversation is on life support in today's information environment. We are treated to speculation about the size of Trump's sexual organ, the length of his time in the saddle, Melania's absence, and his devastation that there are no crowds protesting his trial in lower Manhattan. I never thought that I would be cheering David Pecker for his ability to string together a few coherent, believable sentences. Instead of a real conversation, we are reduced to sloganeering and “bothsidesism” that includes vile insults as well as calls for execution. Will it be by firing squad, or maybe just shot with an AK 47 and unrecognizably mutilated?

Someone posted on my Twitter account a clip of an animated Marjorie Taylor Green ranting incoherently about fake meat Bill Gates grew in a "peach tree dish." Surely, it is a delicacy that will add to the wonders of Georgia. The woman is totally unhinged, yet she gets lots of coverage, and this is exactly what she wants, what the Right wants, and what her donors demand. This is the script: monopolize our attention, clog the airtime, and then move ahead with the other agenda, and we're not talking QAnon or some other nonsense. It doesn't matter whether MTG is an idiot or an Oxonian. She's just a pawn. Their Queen is about to checkmate our democracy.

If you did a survey—now at this moment, not yesterday before the Peach Tree idiocy—you’d find that more respondents believe Bill Gates is experimenting with synthetic meat and that it's finding its way to your neighborhood butcher without proper labeling. I’ll put money on it.

In the process, MTG has also heaped more distrust on the FDA and the entire expert class of technocrats who are ruining America. She’s also created an atmosphere where people who have done good work, gone to college, and gained some standing in their communities for careful thought, attention to science, and language are pilloried. Of course, you don’t have to know a damn thing about scientific experiments to know that we’re being poisoned by fake meat. Actually the less you know, the more credible you are. There's not much of an audience for a man or woman who actually knows something about the real poisons that can infect the food chain. They’re just boring.

Who qualifies as a public intellectual and what is their role? Narrowly defined, they would be an academic, philosopher, economist, or scientist who devotes some of their time to commenting on public issues and, I would venture, subjects that a large number of people find interesting. In science, both Neil deGrasse and Steven Hawkins fit the bill. For all his faults, the late Milton Friedman would have to be included as testimony that his or her opinions don’t have to be as solid as Euclidean geometry.

Who are the current crop of public intellectuals? Dan Rather comes to mind. With less reverence for academia in America, there are no philosophers such as Albert Camus or Bertrand Russell. Rachel Maddow gets high marks; she’s an Oxonian, yet Google calls her a television presenter. John Oliver and Steve Colbert are very bright and provide sharp commentary in their quirky way. Charlie Rose was in the running until he demonstrated that he'd disconnected his head from his penis. Susan Sontag and Gore Vidal are no longer with us. Thomas Friedman tries. No one today commands the respect of an Edward R. Murrow, but there must be people who could assume that role, yet as I survey the Op-Ed page across America, brilliant voices do not speak out clearly and strongly for fear of getting mowed down.

We've always had crazies, even in mighty positions. Sometimes, the powerful maniacs have kept a low profile, or maybe they just didn’t stop taking their meds. But now after Trump in this era of Fox News, the Marjorie Green’s of the airwaves flaunt their stupidity because the media will lap it up, and that’s key.

When I lived in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, an older woman installed herself daily on one of the benches set on Broadway's median divide and screamed at the traffic. None of it made much sense, a 70’s version of Fake Meat and Peach Tree Dishes. But, my point—no one paid her any attention. If MTG were shouting her nonsense from the same bench, they'd have to close Broadway to make room for the TV crews.

The woman I used to see at 102nd Street has now been replaced by a silent public monument. She didn’t make the cut. Dan Rather has 2.5 million followers on Twitter, and MTG has almost 900,000. She's still behind, but her brand of insanity is getting exposure. Lauren Boebert has 1.3 million! Watch out, Dan. They’re coming after you.

If you can't shut her up, stop paying attention to her or giving her undue attention—just stop it.

*Daniel Drezne made these nominations:

1) Ta-Nehisi Coates: Any book or long-form essay of his becomes the topic of conversation among elites. That’s influence.

2) Masha Gessen: I have found her thoughts about the Age of Trump and the Age of Hysteria surrounding Trump to be invaluable. She might even be right about Trump acting more like a teenager than a toddler.

3) Francis Fukuyama: Many people would have a hard time repeating something like “The End of History,” which holds up better than you think. However, Fukuyama’s latest work on political decay has proven to be both prescient and vital.

4) Ron Chernow: I suspect some might not think of Chernow as an intellectual, to which I would respond by noting that Chernow’s biographies lead to reinterpretations of American history. If nothing else, reading Grant will cause multiple generations to rethink what we were taught about Grant — and Robert E. Lee — when we were kids. Since the Civil War still plays a role in current political life, that is no mean achievement.

5) David Autor: The hardest-working labor economist in the profession and probably the least well-known name on this list, Autor's research into the effects of technological change and globalization on the American worker guides much of the current conversation on these topics.

Let's go back to calling it heresy

This is going to get me into trouble. Reflections on a certain kind of theological reflection that inevitably leads to trouble.

My friend the Zen teacher John Tarrant once had dinner with renowned poet Czeslaw Milosz at his house on Grizzly Peak in Berkeley. Among the tales of a fine dinner conversation was this tidbit--Milosz was very interested in studying the various heresies and heretics that have run afoul of the institutional church over the years, even back in the days when the cost of thinking outside the norm could cost your life. Or perhaps the connection between controversy and rigid thinking might be part of his Polish dissident psyche.

But there is another side to heresy that interests me. What happens when your own personal belief system just drives your mind into a wall and there is no escape? We’ve set the fires aside, thankfully, though we still have religious wars that seem as senseless as ever to the unbeliever, but heresy still reeks havoc.

Last night my newsfeed pictured Mgr Jean-Louis Balsa who was just appointed to the post of archeveque of Albi in southern France. Balsa seems to be very likable fellow, with a jolly smile, but I have really no idea why Google choose this clip other than I follow the comings and goings of Pope Francis and his response to the dubia that several recalcitrant cardinals throw out as taunts, trying to alter the direction of (in their view) an errant magisterium. I remembered that Albi had been the hotbed of a very bloody heresy a millennium ago, but it seemed implausible that Google’s algorithm reached back to 1163. The Albigensian heresy held a rather gnostic view of man’s fate, caught in a fierce battle between the forces of pitch black darkness and glorious light of an afterlife. 

So much passes as religion in this day of political and spiritual correctness. The same news feed informs me that Mormonism is the 9th richest religion in the world, just ahead of Scientology. Then they proceed to describe the LDS as a Christian sect. Not since 1896 when Mormons renounced polygamy as the price for admission of Utah to the Union has anyone dared call Joseph Smith a heretic, but I will, at least from any accepted understanding of Christianity. At least L Ron Hubbard was honest enough not to label his sect a Hollywood version of Dale Carnegie’s self-improvement courses or tell us that Jesus in the Temple in Jerusalem told his followers to sell everything they owned so that he could buy a private jet or pay an astronomical price for “going clear.” But my reading of the assassination of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum in 1844 was precisely because of objections to his 40 wives, some as young as 14. This was not a practice that led the early martyrs to death in the Coliseum. (I am not saying that there are many upright god-fearing Mormons who love their children and pay their taxes, but Mormonism is a cult with very strange connections to the life and teaching of Jesus).

Returning to 10th century Albi, the Cathars held certain beliefs about Jesus and the doctrine of the Incarnation that were outside long held institutional beliefs, but there were also beliefs about human nature that the established Roman church found threatening. They held that humans were spirits trapped in fleshly bodies engaged in a conflict between the forces of Light and Darkness. The consequences of that battle were all that mattered. The institutional church of Pope Innocent III aligned with the French House of Caput found this belief so threatening that they redirected the armies of the Crusades from retaking Jerusalem from the Muslims to southern France where they slaughtered thousands of people and destroyed the remnants of these Manichean believers. Religious wars were bloody in olden times though humans still engage in this kind of doctrinal war gauging from the reported number of casualties in Gaza since October 7th. 

In New Age California, among the Light and Love crowd, there is a lot of uncritical talk about the body being some kind of learning vehicle for the soul. We are spirits having a learning experience by being incarnated in bodies, or some such bullshit. Bob Hoffman even goes so far as to try to give trapped souls an emotional component which he called the Quadrinity--the body, spirit, intellect and emotional self, each separate and distinct and operating at less than optimal capacity. I am not out to ignite a religious war to engulf Berkeley and other hotspots around the world, but this is complete nonsense springing from the supernatural understandings of the Spiritualist Church movement. 

I am going to try to resurrect “heresy” and simply define it as adherence to a particular school of thought and separate it from bloody crusades or burning at the stake. What are other heresies floating around today that pretend to be Christian?

Heresy: The Prosperity Gospel from Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” to the predatory Rev. Ike and Rev. Creflo Dollar. (That can’t be his real name, but I admit that it has a kind of ring to it). Motivational speaking has been developed and honed, particularly in the United States, but it is not Christianity. 

Heresy: I have to include dear well intentioned Mary Baker Eddy and her Christian Science. Bows to Mind over Matter, elevating this prattle to a higher level, but it is not Christianity even though my Irish mother thought that Mind over Matter was the underlying rationale of the Sermon on the Mount. 

Heresy: The Westboro Baptist “Kill the Fags” cult is high on my list of perverted religious ideologies. Another cult. The leaders rely on a very selective reading of selected passages from the corpus of Christian texts. The problematic texts do exist, however the condemnation is a bit extreme and the reading very literal. God apparently abhors metaphor or analogy.

Anathema: Franklin Graham et al. Liberty University and the Empire of the Self Righteous. They just seem to be self-serving greedy pricks. I know it is the same kind of language that they hurl against the libtards, but what the hell, if we are throwing all the use of language and critical thinking to the dogs, I have chosen not to waste words. Go take care of your pool boy toy Franklin and try to keep his mouth shut. And just shut up.

The Narcissistic Heresy: There may be something about the positive psychology of Norman Vincent Peal other than to have trained Donald Trump in doublespeak, but looking at what was preached from the Marble Collegiate Church, it is nothing more than a sanctification of American greed. That he was honored by Ronald Reagan with the Presidential Medal of Freedom speaks volumes. It may be hard to really trace the lineage of Trump’s assault on the rule of law, but there is nothing positive in this line of  thinking. It is narcissism. God did not create other people for our individual abuse and exploitation. 

Enough. You get my point.