I'm Sick of Smart People

While I greatly respect my peers and the faculty that I work with, there are times I get very frustrated with academia.

Many smart people have remarked on how anti-intellectualism plays a large role in American political culture. To the extent that "intellectualism" means critical, rational reflection about life and a respect for the intellectual capacity of all human beings, I completely agree and there's nothing elitist about lamenting this fact.

I want to make a distinction, though, between "intellectualism" and "intellectuals." If intellectualism is what I defined above, then "intellectuals," one would think, are those who engage in rational, critical reflection on human life. In our current society though, the "intellectual" too often refers to a specialist, embedded in academic institutions that are elitist and do practice a form of "intellectualism" that seems so far removed from the real world that it's nauseating.

In graduate school, I find myself involved in so many discussions that are, to the casual observer, just a bunch of really smart people saying things so jargon-laden and abstract that ordinary people might listen in and think, "Whoa, that must be smart because I don't understand it." What you learn though is that so much of it is posturing with smart people trying to demonstrate to other smart people just how smart they are. The ideas themselves really aren't that brilliant - and the ones that really are, in fact, are the ones that can be communicated in plain language to anyone.

And I don't claim immunity from this. A graduate seminar appears to be a very laid-back affair, but there's actually lots of informal pressure to speak and show your competence and brilliance, so I catch myself playing the game, too.

My point is: we have enough "intellectuals" in our society, but not enough "intellectualism." We need less people convinced of their own intelligence and dying to demonstrate it to others and a more general respect for rational, critical dialogue about society.

(It occurs to me that perhaps a better way to categorize this would be between the "intellectual" - which can be anyone who thinks about things - and the "academic" - who, by virtue of some special degree and professional position, is supposed to be an enlightened expert. The point's the same though.)

So if we want to combat "anti-intellectualism" in American society, perhaps "academics" and "intellectuals" could start by acting less like the stereotypes that anti-intellectualism thrives on.