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On Britain's Intellectual Decline
- draw_down 8y agoWell, why are the people paid to make political decisions no longer trusted to make those decisions?
- roywiggins 8y agoConsumer culture is approximately as old as the Industrial Revolution (maybe a little bit older). You might be able to argue a qualitative or quantitative change at some point, but you can blame just about anything on a "rise in consumer culture" happening at about any point in recent history...
- frgtpsswrdlame 8y agoWell yes but that's the author's point. Where it used be that 'the men in Whitehall' resisted consumer culture and aired programs which were not necessarily something the public wanted but something that was good for them, they've now given in and just air whatever gets the most viewers. It's a case of consumer culture penetrating an area that used to be slightly protected from the revealed preferences of the public. And I suspect it's not even really an aversion to big ideas, I think it's an aversion to depth. People love big ideas, look at Malcolm Gladwell and similar authors, they have plenty of big ideas but there's a bit of a pop-shallowness to them. Unfortunately the depth is what's needed and I'm not sure a culture which focuses on individual preferences will ever give it to the public at large.
- petermcneeley 8y agoBBC documentarian (and intellectual prophet) Adam Curtis has detailed this and other issues. Here is a link to a short doc that aligns with this article: https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-tv-journalist/ https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-tv-journal...
- Panjam 8y agoThat was excellent. Thanks for posting. It's a short film, so it's not a criticism, but I hope he explains why this happened in more detail.
- rb808 8y agoI've met a lot of British people who did humanities undergrad degrees followed by something more commercial like Software/Law/Finance for a masters. Is that really common? Looking back I think I'd have loved to have done that.
- giobox 8y agoIt's not all that common - I don't have the figures to hand but its probably likely the number of those in the UK with Masters degrees is dwarfed enormously by those with just undergrad ones. That said, I certainly noticed an uptick in post-grad popularity in my cohort of friends (including me!) around 2010, but for us anyway this seemed driven by a tough post-recession job market and a desire to have more directly marketable skills, which a Software Masters provided in relatively short order. I was fortunate enough to study in Scotland where an undergraduate degree is still paid for by the State and Masters are relatively affordable - this is increasingly not the case in the rest of the UK, especially England, so if anything it's likely only going to get less common than it is now.
- amriksohata 8y agoLots of working class mums that are young and single, literally paid to breed and live off benefits, which increasingly is creating a big underclass. The richer are having fewer kids.
- boffinism 8y agoI think you're conflating 'rich people' with 'intellectuals'.
- makapuf 8y agoIntellectuels are rarely from working class. Of course it's possible but it's way easier to achieve higher studies and a PhD and a carrer in academia by example when you don't have to worry about money or working. And thats not about only money but education too. Class, in fact.
- petepete 8y agoAh, the old "single mums are to blame for all social ills" line. Classic. Incidentally, if you really think that Britain's burgeoning peasant underclass is the fault of self-impregnating single mothers you've been mislead; I suggest you change newspapers.
- magduf 8y agoI don't think the OP is blaming any social ills on the single mums, he's instead pointing out that this is a symptom of a much larger problem, like the canary in a coal mine. Having most of your kids being born to a society's most impoverished and least-educated members is not a recipe for long-term success. Saying this isn't blaming the poor, it's pointing out that there's something seriously wrong with the society, and it's not going to lead to the society improving in the long-term, but probably rather the opposite.
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- boffinism 8y ago> On both front benches today there are pitifully few people one could call intellectuals (as distinct from intelligent). Thank goodness. I think we could all do with more intelligence and less 'intellectual' snobbery.
- cs02rm0 8y agoQuite. Equally, whilst Thatcher and Attlee disagreed about almost everything they had at least one thing in common – a loathing of referenda. There's been a lot of faux intellectualism and requoting of Poppler et al since the last referendum. Seems a very thinly veiled article to me.
- jacquesm 8y ago> There's been a lot of faux intellectualism and requoting of Poppler et al since the last referendum. The irony of that typo is hopefully not lost on you.
- collyw 8y agoI see even less evidence of that from our politicians.
- pebers 8y agoUnfortunately we didn't exchange one for the other, the front benches today are bereft of both.
- oblio 8y agoI find this blog post somewhat ironic. The author starts the post by saying that the trigger for the post was Marx's 200th birthday. Britain might have declined slightly, but Marx's home country, Germany, has comparatively fallen from the top of the world, intellectually. It's still a heavy hitter, but if you compare it to pre-WW1/pre-WW2 Germany, it's just a ghost. Why? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hilbert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hilbert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Hertz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Hertz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justus_von_Liebig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justus_von_Liebig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Rontgen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Rontgen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Geiger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Geiger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Bethe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Bethe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Riemann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Riemann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Born https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Born https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_List etc, ad infinitum.
- rb808 8y agoMany on that list are Jewish so that could be a reason.
- oblio 8y agoBut not the majority (I've actually counted and it's 4/16) and definitely not the majority from this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_scientists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_scientists Also, I forgot to include philosophers... a very scary concept, considering the caliber of German philosophers (Kant, Nietzsche, etc.).
- krona 8y agoOn both front benches today there are pitifully few people one could call intellectuals (as distinct from intelligent): Jesse Norman and Barry Gardiner are the only ones I can think of... It's rare that a whole thesis can be undermined by the author in less than a full sentence.
- cfv 8y agoNot knowing who any of those people are, I could use some context. Care to please ellaborate?
- KineticLensman 8y agoTwo British politicians, [0], [1], Conservative and Labour respectively, both educated at well known institutions, and both of whom have been academically active. They are being compared against other front benchers, but not the wider British intellectual community. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Norman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Norman [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Gardiner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Gardiner
- DC-3 8y agoI don't really buy into this. There's still a lot of great academic and intellectual programming on the BBC - Life Scientific and In Our Time come to mind - and British universities are ranked as the best in the world [1]. [1] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2018/world-ranking https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin...
- donquichotte 8y agoAnd let us not forget the educational masterpiece that is "Cunk on Britain".
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- merraksh 8y agoLong debates about philosophy might not have been what the public wanted, but BBC bosses thought they were good for us. I think a form of education is one of the primary purposes and responsibilities of a country's national TV. Managing a broadcaster so that it gives the public what it wants, rather than what's better for them, is akin to giving kids fries and coke all day, because that's what they want.
- briandear 8y agoAssuming the “public” is equal to “children.” A bit arrogant to suggest that. Adam Smith suggests that people will always act in their own self interest; perhaps advanced philosophical knowledge doesn’t have the same utility to normal people. The attitude that the public doesn’t know what’s good for them is disgusting; it’s the very core of the nanny state. However, I will concede that many people would consume a healthier diet of entertainment of it were available. But suggesting that people need to have broadcasters or governments to be parents of an ignorant citizenry smacks of the same though patterns condemned in the book 1984.
- DaiPlusPlus 8y ago> The attitude that the public doesn’t know what’s good for them is disgusting; it’s the very core of the nanny state. It’s very demonstrable though - it’s why practically every country has an equivalent to US Social Security - and why most democracies are Representative instead of Direct. Your argument would have more strength if the BBC or national arts funds operated in a vacuum - but they exist in competition with other private, profit-driven organisations. I feel it’s important that the public get exposure to programming that commercial sponsors (and thus network-execs/channel directors) wouldn’t touch. And it’s also essential for unbiased (or as close to unbiased as we can get) broadcast journalism. (I accept that when a “Premium”-service customer base is large enough, e.g. HBO-sized, the need for state funding is minimised - I think HBO in particular is in a good place to launch a US-based, commercial-free broadcast news service - but smaller countries and markets would definitely need to employ some form of state funding to ensure editorial independence and an informed populace - which can only be good for democracy)
- collyw 8y agoWe admire the Beckhams and Kardaishins though, so all is not lost.
- whatshisface 8y agoOne major theme running through this article is the idea that smart people should know what's good for us, and organize society so that we get it. I've never understood how they are expected to actually do this: wouldn't they always prefer to figure out what's good for themselves and then organize society so that they get that? Try as we might to find a good crowbar to pry democracy off of our representative governments, we can't forget that the "will of the people," however misguided it might be, is the only thing that reliably includes not ruining them as a priority!
- ranie93 8y ago>the "will of the people," however misguided it might be, is the only thing that reliably includes not ruining them as a priority! What about a Tragedy of the Commons scenario?
- whatshisface 8y agoThe will of a person is different from the will of all the people averaged together. Even in a society of completely amoral people, each person will think that nobody else should ruin the commons. If you put littering to a vote, you'd have one yes and three hundred million "no"s - everybody would want to stop other people's crimes, and that would be enough. The situation only gets better if anybody is principled. Tinpot dictators ravage their land in pursuit of resources to sell to richer nations all the time. The elites aren't going to be more principled than the proles - if you're nasty and educated that just makes you better at being nasty.
- clarkmoody 8y agoI was with you on that first paragraph, then you had to bring in the "will of the people." Democracy simply replaces "smart people" with "a majority of voters," which is almost always a minority of the population. So instead of the ruling elites determining what's best for everyone, now you have a larger group of people -- still a minority -- determining what's good for themselves and foisting it upon everyone else.
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- icebraining 8y agoMaybe voters have more power now? - Bernard, if the right people don't have power do you know what happens? The wrong people get it. Politicians, counsellors, ordinary voters. - But aren't they supposed to, in a democracy? - This is a British democracy! - What do you mean? - British democracy recognises that you need a system to protect the important things of life, and keep them out of the hands of the barbarians. Things like the Opera, Radio Three, the countryside, the law, the universities ... both of them. -- Yes, Prime Minister (S02E05)
- Theodores 8y agoThe problem is the all prevalent Western Media Mindset - as the Russian media describe it. Since Kosovo and onward many lies have been told. Dare to say so and you are deemed Communist. The Overton window is set by the BBC in the UK, this being the acceptable spectrum of thought, from left to right. Because of the deep lies about how these wars start there is belief instead of knowledge. So it is a church with some different doctrines but no questioning of the creation myths. Lies have to be disseminated, truths can be arrived at by studying facts. We normally have gatekeeper radicals to keep the pretence up, for decades it was Tony Benn. Only Tony Benn dared to question Trident, today we have the likes of whatshisname Brand gatekeeping the acceptable radical thinking. If you were someone others respected and you told them you were ditching the job because you wanted to go into politics then people would think you had gone mad. The odd thing is that there is no escaping it. People are deeply conditioned in the UK. Luckily there is Brexit to shake things up a bit. Maybe we can escape our shackles of history then and engage with the world as grown ups to be treated as we wish to be treated.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoI don't know why you think that, the leader of the opposition is against renewing Trident and that is widely reported in the media, at the BBC and elsewhere.
- wyclif 8y agoThe author discredits himself by referring to Daniel Hannan as an "ignorant gobshite" on Marx or anything else; Hannan speaks French and Spanish fluently as well as English, which, I suspect, is two languages more than the author does. Hannan studied History at...wait for it...Oxford University. So that 'ignorant' line alone made it difficult for me to take this blogger quite seriously (though I upvoted this story as I have no doubt the overall trajectory of Britain's intellectual decline is accurate as otherwise described, all things considered).
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoHannan might not be ignorant but he is definitely a gobshite. Everything I have heard him say comes through the lens of his dislike of the EU, there is little room for fact or even nuance.
- wyclif 8y agoDislike of the EU != "gobshite." Hell, if that were true then half the world might be classified by you as gobshite! Perhaps you'd be better off demonstrating what you find so objectionable about Hannan's view of the EU and which "facts" he's mistaken about (given that he speaks three of its languages fluently) instead of engaging in ad hominems.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoDislike of the EU != "gobshite." I never said that it does.
- jankotek 8y ago>The commemorations of Marx’s 200th birthday As someone from east Europe, I find this pretty funny. >Today, his most high-profile critics are ignorant gobshites. You must read 10k pages of related work, before you can criticize someone like Hitler or Nazism....
- inops 8y agoThere's been a recent influx of this sort of discussion in Britain. Most of it seems to be, at the core, the elites' (and those who would like to style themselves as elites) attempts to justify their disillusionment with democracy, which the referendum result caused. It's amazing how quickly people turn on the idea of giving the everyman a say in government, when it gives them the result they don't like. The referendum was a rare example in Britain of where the result wasn't able to be hand-waved away, like is typical with FPTP elections. The result was so significant because it saw the majority of the public reject all the major parties' platforms on the issue, and --I think-- undermined the pretenses of a lot of those in power, who like to frame themselves as being "of the people". Hence the disillusion. A lot of the discussion reminds me of the arguments put forward by the hereditary peers in the late 90s, before most of them were chucked out of the House of Lords: that their experiences and positions in society made them uniquely able to make important decisions about the country. It's all rather ironic.
- dageshi 8y agoI think in addition there's a more visceral reason as well. It's the first time in a long time that a decision taken by the populace will adversely affect the "elite" directly. People who have done very well out of EU integration will suddenly find themselves actually having to figure out what to do without it. Most of them are wealthy and will be able to adapt, but for the first time in a long time they haven't been insulated from the consequences of public opinion.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoI suspect the wealthy will be fine and it will be the poor who suffer if there is any suffering to be done.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoIronically, it was (some of) the elites who decided to hold the referendum. So they should be disillusioned with their own crowd as well.
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- jimduk 8y agoMy view would to rephrase the hypothesis as "the quality of 'Britain's public intellectual debate' has declined". This seems true in parts, a friend became intrigued by the quality of debate for Britain's membership of the EEC in 1975 vs. Brexit. Two examples for 1975 are ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2jUYryRYII https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2jUYryRYII and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zBFh6bpcMo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zBFh6bpcMo) and these certainly seem of higher quality. One hypothesis (similar to Curtis above) was that there were two energised generations, post WW2 and 1960s, who believed that public debate and ideas could change things, and a variety of new-ish institutions and technologies (BBC, TV) could enable that change. They were partially successful, but the energy and enthusiasm dissipated over time. Another argument is that Britain is reasonably anti the public intellectual (e.g. unlike the French but much better than the US), apart from during certain times of fairly major change (Royal Society/Glorious Revolution; Scottish Enlightenment; post WW2 settlement etc.) and we are going back to our dormant state. A third may be that the nature of 'public' has changed, and the debate is going on, but not in media forms which stifle and trivialise it (Less optimistic here, the Greens tried hard to change public debate, some say Momentum, certainly we are quite good at up-market PR, brand design and marketing, all of which suck the energy/deflect from certain debates) In my experience, in private the quality of debate isn't too bad, though a touch cynical
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago> the nature of 'public' has changed There was "public" debate/discussion before. And then there was the conversation at the tavern, which was a different (and less intellectual) thing. What's changed is the internet, which kind of combined those worlds. Someone would make a speech or state a position. It would get reported on, in a newspaper article. Many people would have comments, but the newspaper would only print one or two replies (the very best ones) for the world to see. The rest of the discussion would happen in the tavern, where only a few people would hear any individual comment. Such comments would be clearly distinct from the replies printed in the newspaper. But now the reporting is online, with a comments section, which doesn't filter the replies. The equivalent of the tavern (all the taverns put together) is now right alongside the original article. And I think that this may have changed the level of the reporting to some degree, too. They're moving toward the level of the comments - not all the way, but in that direction.
- randcraw 8y agoThis effect is easily confirmed by comparing a periodical from today with back issues written 50 years ago. By contrast, today's fare has been simplified for both style and substance, presuming the reader has no foreknowledge of science, and more markedly, zero facility in math. This is no more apparent than in "Scientific American". The writing in the issues from the 1980's back through the century before was intended for professionals -- the engineer, scientist, or serious amateur. By contrast, the literacy of today's SciAm has declined to the level of a middle school. And substance suffers comparably; regular contributors of fare that required nontrivial thought like Martin Gardner and Doug Hofstadter are long gone. But SciAm isn't an isolated case. Even today's more literate magazines like Harpers and The New Yorker seem to have difficulty writing for a thoughtful audience, all too often preferring to provoke the reader not with provocative ideas or fresh perspectives, but by eliciting anger with the injection of irrelevant references to base politics. This problem is hardly unique to Britain.
- ghostbrainalpha 8y agoBut is the readership smaller today than it was 50 years ago? I'm totally fine if SciAm writes for a broader audience because it has grown from a niche publication for academics to something that most American's have at least heard of. But if the reading level has declined AND the readership has declined, that might indicate a problem. I still hold out hope that this is a result of knowledge fragmentation more than anything. The computer scientist of 50 years ago, may have been better inform broadly on all the sciences, but maybe gave up that breadth of knowledge to read focused journals on quantum computing, and other topics the computer scientist of 50 years ago would have trouble understanding.
- randcraw 8y agoWould knowledge fragmentation explain why general interest pubs (like SciAm) would have less appeal today, leading to their being "dumbed down"? Conversely, if as I think you suggest, there had been a rise in the number of literate thoughtful in-depth pubs focused on narrow specialization, then I'd accept that today's minds are equally active as yesteryear's but have just turned their attention inward. But I see nothing like that. Even semi-technical pubs like those in the computing space have degenerated into product and project promos (as MIT Tech Review has done). Where are today's equivalents to Creative Computing or Dr Dobbs or WiReD circa 1998 or InfoWorld circa 1985? The closest I've seen might be the Maker/Arduino/Pi pubs, but their agenda isn't insight, it's small specific ideas of projects (like Popular Mechanics often was in the 60's). All deeper fare on science faded out about 20 years ago. I side with the OP's interpretation; their absence is striking and suggests something big has changed. Doesn't such a "shallowing" (a la Nicholas Carr) and narrowing of interests imply we've all become less generally curious? Aren't these signs that we're less inclined to explore novel possible worlds, or we're satisfied to do so in less depth, than a generation (or two) ago? Online forums are no substitute for serious recreational inquiry, even the (very) few that are as constructively and generally clued-in as HNN.