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THE_NEW_INTELLECTUALS

                                       Jul 28, 2012

                                                     SCIALABBA

Scialabba, in his 1987 essay "What Are Intellectuals
Good For?" (on p.6 of the tradepaper collection)         LAST_INTELLECTUALS
raises an objection to Russell Jacoby's "Last
Intellectuals" that seems similar to one of mine:

  "But the political culture has changed in a way
  that undermines not merely the viability, but
  also the authority, of the generalist.  To put
  it crudely and provocatively: sensibility now
  matters less than facts; cultivated judgement is
  now (thanks in part to the example of earlier
  public intellectuals) commoner and far easier to
  acquire than adequate information."

  So: The kind of intellectuals
  that are needed now may simply
  not be the kind that we needed     My thought was along the
  once.                              lines of the two cultures
                                     divide: (1) in a technical
    His take is that the earlier     era, technical writing matters;
    generations of intellectuals     (2) ignoring the entire field
    did a good job of working        of science fiction is ridiculous...
    through broad ethical
    issues, but the challenge                          This is brought home by
    since the 80s has been more                        alternating between
    a matter of careful research                       Scialabba and Stewart
    and collation ala Noam                             Brand.  Defending Marx's
    Chomsky.                                           honor against cold war
                                                       slurs seems a little
    Scialabba's point: the                             irrelevant compared to
    world has been increasingly                        issues like global
    dominated by an extremely     And I would add      warming.
    well-funded right wing        that this machine
    propaganda machine, and now   has been doing a         Krugman and company
    simply getting people to      fair job of              already have their
    face what's going on is a     transitioning to         hands full defending
    much bigger problem than      the internet era,        Keynes' honor... and
    anything a George Orwell      but there remains        compared to the
    ever had to face.             an opportunity to        current crop of
                                  counterattack, to        "conservative"
    Scialabba, p 7: "... it now   establish an             crazies, Adam Smith
    requires far more training,   internet that can        was an extreme lefty,
    leisure, and resources to     create a populace        so maybe we don't
    penetrate the screen of       of well-informed         need another dose of
    corporate or governmental     citizens.                Marx quite yet.
    propaganda about, say,
    environmental regulation,        Perhaps not a
    product safety, or foreign       republic of
    policy, than are available       owls, but at
    to the ordinary citizen.         least not a
    When amateurs were in            stampede of
    charge of deceiving the          cattle.
    public about American
    foreign policy, they did it
    badly; Henrey Kissinger,
    Richard Perle, and Elliott    ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
    Abrams are another matter."


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