“There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. It’s the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility.”
Historically, America has had a long standing tradition of anti-intellectualism with pop-culture being the most recent evidence. What I cannot understand, however, is the growing trend of anti-intellectualism in university life. Why is it anytime I find myself in a political debate or attempting to discuss social issues with other students, I’m met with vapid, jeering opponents who immediately jump to insults or surface-level responses? It seems those of us interested in real progress are left bouncing off empty vessels. We are here to shape our minds, to become experts in our studies and professionals in our work. Why is college culture nearly void of intellectual curiosity, even in the classroom where active learning is the supposed goal? As college students, why do we choose a flashy newsfeed over an unopened book? We are being spoon-fed neat packages of obedience and we’re digesting it well. It’s becoming us, we are becoming it.
“An anti-intellectual society will have large swaths of people who are motivated by fear, susceptible to tribalism and simplistic explanations, incapable of emotional maturity, and prone to violent solutions.”
Why are we so stubbornly reluctant to fill the community basket with warm bread? If you have two loaves, and a friend is without, isn’t there a natural inclination to share? We’ve been cleverly manipulated to hate and ridicule the poor and idolize the rich. We’ve been taught to believe self-importance trumps the good of the whole. As we’ve yet to evolve past separatism to inclusivity, we’re becoming stagnant in our social progression. We’ve been conditioned to hate our neighbor and drool over celebrity affairs. Celebrities, people we have no personal tie to, seem to dominate our interests over art or literature. The media pulls the strings of our marionette minds and we willingly dance across the stage while simultaneously taking selfies and updating our Facebook statuses.
Our culture doesn’t educate minds anymore, we train minds to perform routine tasks that require minimal skill and absolutely no creativity or critical thinking. We’ve squashed the curious mind and re-expanded the hole to fill it with distraction and dogma. We’re taught to conform or to medicate. We’re taught to roll over and play dead. Are we not human beings capable of experiencing a vast array of human emotion? We are capable of experiencing immense beauty and creativity. We are stardust in human form... our minds are endowed with consciousness and creative power so far beyond our current comprehension. We have access to a whole, ever-expanding spectrum of human experience, yet we’re actively choosing not to partake in it. These are all symptoms of our capitalistic culture and lack of authenticity. An American culture has been birthed from colonization and genocide. We can do better. Our children deserve better.
Piggy-backing on my article from last week, I want to stress the importance of presence in our lives. Sometimes simply being present with ourselves will gift us with profound insights, sometimes personal insights more powerful than a book or a song can provide. We can and do create our realities by acting or reacting to our external world. We are given a set of tools with which to navigate this planet. The systems built around us influence the systems within us, but we still choose how we wish to navigate. With access to an infinite rabbit-hole (our beloved Internet) of opportunities for information-sharing and social and political action at our fingertips, why have so many of us accepted mediocrity and shallow-living as our ultimate existence?
Really now, The Kardashians and The Bachelor aren’t all that fascinating. Well, maybe from a psychological perspective.
