5 ms·
Honest question: which societies are considered "pro intellectual"?
by codesushi42 7y ago
Honest question: which societies are considered "pro intellectual"?
- philipov 7y agoGermany, Russia, China, Korea, and Japan come to mind.
- wetpaws 7y agoRussia copies a lot of anti-intellectualism from US. (just watch russian television if you dont believe me)
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago> Russia While under the Soviet Union intellectual pursuits were more appreciated among the general population than in other countries (though naturally there were significant restrictions on what topics could be breached in art and literature), a lot of that culture disappeared in Russia after 1991. You don’t see many commuters reading belles lettres on the metro any more, chess still has its fans but nowhere near like in the socialist era, and Russian television today is as garish and sensationalistic as anywhere else. One of the reasons that there was such a book culture across the Eastern Bloc is because books were extremely cheap by local standards, but there was little other media to consume or few other products to spend one’s money on. After the fall of Communism, books were no longer as cheap because the state no longer artificially set their prices at low levels, and there was an explosion of new, free television, radio, and magazine media that the population could consume instead, and there were new consumer goods to spend money on (when one had money, as there were some rocky times).
- oarabbus_ 7y agoKorea is excessively conformist. I don't know what kind of definition of "intellectualism" it could fall under. While if we're giving more credit to historical influence than modern day, Germany would make the list, I think they fall off if you give weight to the modern day. Nothing wrong with them, they're simply no longer a remarkable, intellectual nation on 2019's leaderboard. Russia, China, and Japan I'd agree with, although I am not a big fan of the "brand" of intellectualism the first two adhere to.
- naringas 7y ago> I don't know what kind of definition of "intellectualism" it could fall under. what about success within traditional academic institutions?
- oarabbus_ 7y agoI'm not sure I understand your point. By the criteria of traditional academic success, Korea would not make a "most intellectual" shortlist of nations, at least according to a fair sampling of unbiased individuals. In fact, your point about academic intellectualism only gives more credence to the point I was making in the first place.
- philipov 7y agoConformity and intellectualism are not mutually exclusive. Intellectualism doesn't imply contrarianism, as there are a great many intellectual pursuits that involve studying and continuing traditional bodies of knowledge such as Confucianism, or Mathematics and Science. Korean culture definitely venerates academic achievement, even if those achievements shouldn't include upheavals in social philosophy, and even if there is a strict social order for determining who is allowed to have creative license. Simply learning the lessons of the past, and skillfully transmitting them to future generations, is a more important social function than making new advances. I would go so far as to say that one of the causes of American anti-intellectualism is the fetishization of groundbreaking discovery to the extent that being a skilled teacher is looked down on. An intellectual community can't survive across multiple generations without a respected class of specialized teachers who also deeply understand the topics they are tasked with passing on to children. The dominant attitude in America is that teaching is for failures; the saying goes, "those who can't do, teach."
- oarabbus_ 7y agoCorrect, conformity and intellectualism are not mutually exclusive, but they do approach orthogonality. I expanded on this point here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20992014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20992014
- blackflame7000 7y agoIt depends on how you define "Intellectual". If I define it as one with great knowledge of how to gain wealth then I would say the US is very pro Intellectual. I'm sure there are some people that think you have to be published in one of those journals whos results more often than not can't be replicated, to be considered intellectual, however. The definition of the word is up for interpretation.
- prewett 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual would be a good starting definition
- blackflame7000 7y agoI prefer a dictionary. There you will find that Intellectual comes from latin intellēctus (“understanding”). There is no qualification of what that understand must be about.
- packet_nerd 7y agoSingapore and South Korea?
- oarabbus_ 7y agoPerhaps I'm misunderstanding the definition, but I'd consider those to be excessively conformist nations and not the beacons of intellectualism.
- brownbat 7y agoThe most celebrated historical ruler in Korea is mainly famous for his scholastic achievements, like inventing the current writing system. There are some K-Dramas that suggest the most popular students are the ones with the best educational accomplishments, in contrast to the cliche of the US football quarterback.
- lvturner 7y agoPerhaps I am misunderstanding the definition but why do the two have to be mutually exclusive? Is intellectualism intrinsically non-conformist? (genuinely asking)
- oarabbus_ 7y agoThat is a good question; I don't believe anyone including the OP comment defined intellectualism, so we all likely have our own definitions. Personally I think intellectualism consists of a few components. The first is pure, raw "intelligence" or "brilliance", neither of which is particularly well defined, but it is my main criteria. For a nation, this is is essentially the power of science, invention, technology, etc. Next would be something like "diversity of thought" and "beauty of art". This includes both how "free" the people are, as well as how meaningful the creative, artistic, philosophical works of the nation are. This includes art, poetry, scripture, books, TV, music, theater, etc. Finally, I use a "modern day weighting" system. This means, if there was some hypothetical country that was historically a powerhouse, but was not remarkable in modern day, they'd be ranked equally to a country which was a world leader today, but inconsequential historically (or didn't exist until recently). With these criteria, I believe a country like China has sheer intellectual power and the artistic contributions which outweigh the (quite terrible) conformity of thought; Korea, on the other hand, is "too conformist" given the weight of its contributions.
- dfischer 7y agoSimilarly, given a gradient of anti intellectual to pro intellectual where would all societies rest?
- 52-6F-62 7y agoI’m seeing a range of answers that seem to betray individual value systems more than anything. I’ll play along. I’d say Ireland, Scotland, Netherlands, Germany, France, Sweden, Japan. Societies of continuing celebration of poetic, philosophical, artistic, and scientific achievement. (That’s a short list, and a fast-thought out one that is shorter than it should be. Don’t crucify me for it. There are entire ranges of the planet I’ve skipped)
- tbabb 7y agoAncient Greece, too.
- HarryHirsch 7y agoAnd the Jewish nation.
- Mediterraneo10 7y agoJews have contributed so much to the intellectual life of other countries that one gets the impression that the Jewish people as a whole is like that. Going to Israel for the first time was a shock because there I was swiftly disabused of that notion. In Israel, one meets the whole spectrum of people from extremely intellectual to anti-intellectual as you might find anywhere. I had a similar experience when I visited Finland for the first time after knowing of it only as a country with high achievement in schools and free university education. Most of the Finns I knew abroad came from these highly educated backgrounds. But when I visited the country, suddenly I came face to face with school dropouts mopping floors and alcoholic layabouts, just like in any other country on earth.
- einpoklum 7y agoThere is no such thing as a "Jewish Nation". In Jewish religion, erudition is held in high regard, and in some Jewish communities that carries over to intellectuals as well; but - in some, it's the other way around, i.e. intellectualism is considered straying from focus on religious studies to pursuing Gentile (non-Jewish) thought and life. ... and that's not to speak about the anti-Intellectualism Israel is rife with, these days.
- mc32 7y agoYou know this is tricky. The CCP leadership is intellectual and is pro intellectual for its own cadres. But are they pro populace intellectualism? Same for the Bolsheviks. And to be honest, I think GWB's anti-intellectualism is as much a problem as is disconnected intellectualism who take it upon themselves to do what's "right" for the population at large.
- skissane 7y agoIn France, there is still such a thing as a "celebrity philosopher".
- bobthechef 7y agoAnd that's good how? It's just snobbish pseudo-intellectualism. If anything, it can be more corrosive because it produces a suffocating, toxic atmosphere of fraud. Groupies and scenesters.
- codesushi42 7y agoIs that what really happens in France?
- Biganon 7y agoWith "philosophers" like Bernard-Henri Lévy, who keeps getting invited to TV shows despite being considered a phoney by pretty much all his colleagues: yes.
- jarvl 7y agoI'm not sure I agree. I can apply your statement to other celebrity academics: scientists, astromoners, physicists, etc. And for all of those professions I have a hard time believing that any "celebrity" (i.e. Steven Hawking, Brian Cox, Noam Chomsky) that emerges from them produces a "toxic atmosphere of fraud" or undermines the work of other professionals in the field. But it may depend on who you consider a "celebrity".
- Nasrudith 7y agoPardon the pun but to be frank there is a point at least in the case of the French. I know the term best in the context of Bruno Latour's dribble. Given the sheer nationalism draped for why he was supported it seemed to be motivated reasoning as a desperate cling to superiority like their language board trying desperately to avoid loanwords, and insistence upon very narrow culinary definitions. There seems to be an isolationist complex about not wanting to have to compete. (Which as a national neurosis is not unique - see American exceptionalism.) That aside Latour was infamously an originator of the "Post Truth" and his support for utter nonsense. It is true that social aspects affecting what science is considered, achieves mindahare, is funded, and catches on and progresses. It is undeniable as seen by the derth of statistics and genetics papers from the USSR when both were declared bourgeoisie pseudosciences. It affecting what is actually right? Hell no. Although at least to his credit he realized what a monster he had created. Philosophy isn't neccessarily bad but it isn't neccessarily good either. Given that it is often defined via its independence from the real world there are many spaces to explore. Which includes the potential to be absolute pseudouintellectual or antiintellectual nonsense. That makes it different from the other examples - they are verifiable and it is possible to call bullshit and outright prove them wrong. "Celebrity philisopher" may just mean that it flatters preconceptions without the ability to be countered via hard proof that "no the moon is not and cannot be made of cheese".
- RootKitBeerCat 7y agoI’d argue that in most societies that have existed, there is at least a caste or class that value and put their resources towards a form of intellectualism. How you measure its degree of new idea / innovative thought production or some such other intellectual endeavors realization, is really difficult, for example you could consider a religious leader position that shares moral or meaningful stories even if just historical stories, is someone in the society who inspires intellectualism if only for provoking the intellect to think about another perspective than their own.
- darksaints 7y agoCanadian society is quite a bit like American society minus a hell of a lot of anti-intellectualism. Not that it doesn't exist there, but the difference between the two is pretty stark.