counter-anti-intellectualism
It seems a lot lately like there’s this cultural anti-intellectual push coming from the far-right — the religious nuts who are gaining more political power… I dunno.
Anyway, I think this anti-intellectualism is pretty perceptible these days … and manifests itself in a lot of forms. Government’s catering to big media over science (read: DMCA, others). Communications decency pushes … entertainment in general. But the biggest source of it is the vocal Christian fundamentalist movement. It’s shocking and disturbing how much of that comes from there…
I’m not trying to turn my blog into a giant atheistic tirade or anything … so we’ll just take it as a premise: there exists a nationwide and maybe worldwide anti-intellectual movement. With that as a premise, I can go on.
So, I’ve also noticed a counter-anti-intellectualism resurgence lately… and on TV it’s being pushed by shows like the Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, the Daily Show, Mythbusters, and Penn and Teller’s Bullshit.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Those shows are nothing more than mere entertainment. They don’t really give firm educational foundations, they don’t inform you of much of anything … but they make the sort of points that try to rekindle that spark of intellect, and incite people to think for themselves.
Mythbusters is a good example of this … they don’t really explain a whole lot of the physics behind the random experiments they do, because that wouldn’t be interesting to people. Instead, what they do is raw, uninformed experiment. They pose a hypothesis (based on an urban legend or common saying or whatever), they come up with an experiment to test the hypothesis, and they revise the theory based on the results. Repeat for an hour or so, edit it into something entertaining, and present the heart of the scientific method without getting caught up on the bulk of scientific knowledge.
South Park is another good example, for a different reason. The jokes that South Park makes are the sort of jokes that you wouldn’t get if you weren’t current on trends in American culture, and they point out the utter stupidity rampant in a lot of people’s beliefs and in a lot of trends. And The Simpsons and Family Guy make the same sort of jokes, just without quite as much willingness to offend their subjects.
Bullshit is an even better dose of counter-anti-intellectualism. Basically every episode is predicated on some incredibly stupid belief or practice, trying to expose the con-artists at the core of it.
This political interplay, manifested in popular culture and mainstream media, is interesting. What’s even more interesting to me is that spectating on it has very much pushed my own opinions to one side of it.
March 19th, 2006 at 11:03 am
Your cousin — agree, but point out that the trend may have always been there, but you are just more aware than you were before. If I was a conspiracy believer, I’d say that the church and government were in collusion when television was developed. Before there was Hearst and before that — well, there have been many in the media. You can always tell which party is in office by the cultural trends. Republicans tend to play up to the religious extremists, while Democrats favor the liberals. It is frustrating to hear people speak and make laws without any thought to the absurdity of the laws or the future consequences.
Love you!