I'm With Stupid.... The Intellectual Gap

We all know it exists. It has existed for decades and today it is probably more pervasive than the traditional divide between conservatives and liberals or as some would like us to frame it: between Democrats and Republicans. I am speaking of the intellectual divide.

I got into one of my many internet arguments today (I get into these daily. I admit I enjoy it.). This time it was originally about Kirk Cameron and his stating some crap about homosexuality being “wrong”. On the thread I posted that the dude is just “STUPID” and no one should pay attention to him in the first place. Someone who apparently shares some of his Bible-based worldview was offended. Eventually, she pegged me as one of those “intellectual snobs” that is always lecturing and looking down on her.

Admittedly, there was nothing I could say. After all, I opened with that S-bomb. I confess that Kirk Cameron is the sort of person that makes me physically ill. I find few things more threatening to our future as a race than the willful use of religion to propel ignorance. It is my opinion that if your faith in God depends on ignoring the discovered facts of our universe then your faith is weak and your God is small.

Sadly, this small God is a powerful political force and the ignorance it carries threatens our ability to evolve and prosper as a nation. This small God is thrown in the face of gays. It is thrown in the face of women. Even worse, there are the attempts to use this small God to corrupt our youth and weaken our education.

Now a caveat: I am not a Bill Maher or Christopher Hitchens. I don’t think everyone that believes in a God is an idiot. I have too many intelligent Christian friends. I prefer to think that God and Science are not at war. I like to think each new discovery makes God greater. Evolution is miraculous. If a God came up with that, He truly is amazing. Science, as a whole, has made the Universe greater. Looking in and out, we have discovered that the Universe is far larger than we could have possibly imagined. I would think that this would make God greater. Instead, so many people insist on limiting God to the tiny and dark world we inhabited when the Bible was written thousands of years ago.

This is only one line of the intellectual v. anti-intellectual divide. We are “debating” climate change. There is a battle over history. Increasingly, ideas are not debated based on objective facts. Instead of arguing based on how things are people are arguing based on how they think things should be. People are choosing their reality and then demanding you accept it as a starting point for debate. It’s no wonder these arguments go nowhere. How can people come to any agreement when they live in two completely different realities?

This brings about the tricky part. How can this divide be bridged? I have heard from Obama critics that he always sounds like he is “lecturing”. Indeed, he is a practiced lecturer. Sadly, I think Obama is actually going through some pains to explain why he believes certain things. He is making a reasoned argument. In other words, he is being an intellectual snob. Perhaps that is one of his faults. Bush would never make much of a reasoned argument for anything he did. He would usually just say what he believes and leave it at that. Sometimes he would throw in a hyperbole: “The mushroom cloud” that Iraq was threatening us with for example.

This is where I get into trouble too. How can you make a reasoned argument without sounding like a prick? And what is it about our education system that leaves so many with such a disdain for learning? Are people ever resentful of those “honor students” who would go on to college and become successful? Has the old paradigm of high school bullying in which the jock beats up the nerd been replaced by the nerds taunting the jocks for being stupid? Has our schools’ insistence of putting students on “tracks” early in childhood, labeling some kids “gifted” and others “average” led to adults having nothing but disdain for both learning and the educated?

If you can’t reason with people then how can you reach people? Is it just a sad fact that people will cling to their beliefs in spite of any and all evidence to the contrary? No doubt this is true for a lot of people. This is not a left v. right or intellectual v. anti-intellectual condition either. People on all sides become rigid in their positions. The easiest way to tell them from the rest is by noticing when the argument breaks down into personal insults. “You’re too… sold out, stupid, ignorant, etc to understand” and the like is a sure sign that an impenetrable wall has been put up. No reason could possibly get through.

So what makes Americans so “anti-intellectual”? My guess is that people don’t like to be told what to think. That is totally understandable. I don’t like being told what to think either. On the other side, the “intellectuals” tend to approach these clashes with the point of view that the people they are arguing with don’t think. It is insulting but maybe understandable too. After all, the evidence for something like evolution is overwhelming and it is hard to respect an argument against it. Still, if you give a person a chance to explain his position you might find it more nuanced and reasoned than you expected. Maybe not but opening with the “S-bomb” is a sure sign that this is going nowhere.

Solutions? I see only one. People need to be taught how to think. The education system of regurgitation has given us a nation of idiots. Furthermore, it has led us to believe in a false division between smart and dumb people. I don’t think the IQ divide is as great as we pretend it is. It is the system that makes people “intellectuals” and “anti-intellectuals”. If people were taught to open and exercise their minds more we could start having real conversations again. People would be able to articulate their positions and wouldn’t have to insult their opponents. These days it is pointless to be taught to memorize shit anyway. I have a Wikipedia app on my phone. What do you want to know? Information is not the problem. How to deal with it is.