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I’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

I’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 ago
Ancient Greece, too.
- HarryHirsch 7y ago
  And the Jewish nation.
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    Jews 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 ago
    There 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.
oarabbus_ 7y ago
You said all the other answers simply betray personal value systems, and not to crucify your list, but your list is essentially one of (Northern) Euro nations, plus Japan. Then you cite poetic, philosophical, artistic, and scientific achievement as your criteria, but leave out countries like India, Russia, and China. Could you explain your rationale here?
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  I jotted it down in seconds and have limited experience with some parts of the world. India absolutely has one of the longest poetic traditions and it fascinates me endlessly. I’d have been remiss to say that’s all that qualifies in my mind. That’s why I said it was not at all the end of what I’d consider an intellectual society. I’m hesitant to bring present-day Russia into it as I qualified with “continuing”. I say this as someone who studied Russian literature when I was younger. Again, please don’t discount my qualifiers above. It was by no means a survey list—just meant to illustrate my main point with societies I do have experience with.
  - oarabbus_ 7y ago
    Thanks for the explanation. I realize that my post may have come off as antagonistic (the downvotes from others certainly seem to suggest that), but really I was just trying to understand your rationale. I edited my post to hopefully sound less antagonistic.
    - seamyb88 7y ago
      Don't worry about down votes. You can replenish all with a witty quip. You can also undo the replenishing with a witty quip. Don't worry about down votes. I look for the down-voted, as the controversial ones are where I like to start. I'll give you an upvote because I've been to India for academic purposes.
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    India is a difficult country for outsiders to gauge its level of intellectual culture. I know India has an ancient tradition of religious learning and philosophy based on the study of texts. It has produced 20th-century novelists that are known the whole world over. And yet when I spent a year traveling all over India, there seemed to be so few bookshops even in upper-class districts, and so little reading in public. I could only conclude that reading and the intellectual life was the pursuit of only a small minority, but because of India’s huge population, even that small minority was large enough to be self-sustaining and make its impact, even if it was rather hidden away from sight.
prewett 7y ago
I don't think that celebration of the arts and science is a good metric of pro-intellectual culture. The US does all these things, too. It has a shorter history, though, so it has a smaller amount of cultural works (but you said celebration, anyway). I think pro-intellectual culture is one that values thoughtful questioning, including of the status quo. Opinions are required to have a good argument; dogma (religious, political, technical, or otherwise) is not acceptable. It's G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis instead of fundamentalists; it's The Federalist Papers instead of "the free market fixes all problems"; it's original Agile instead of process-Agile; it's real Hungarian notation instead of MS-docs-"Hungarian" notation.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  I agree. My answer needed more qualifiers.
- adventured 7y ago
  > The US does all these things, too. It has a shorter history, though An important point that is being almost universally ignored here. The history of a modern, organized US is about 150 years old at this point. Anything prior to the Civil War is a baby-level of development, hopeful, maybe, could be, nation just learning how to crawl. It's rather absurd that the US is being browbeaten in this thread against cultures that have existed for many hundreds of years or more; in some cases a thousand plus years. The US has shifted from being ~80% white European-descendant culturally to being 55%-60% (in real terms, as the US has ~25 million illegal immigrants that are never net leaving, and they contribute culturally to the pool) in the span of 40x years, with a massive injection of Asian and Latin-American-Hispanic cultures since the early 1970s. With the point being, the US isn't even remotely close to being a settled, well established cultural structure. Who knows what it will or won't become in 200 more years.
  - zenhack 7y ago
    Your numbers are way off: * The US is still 70+% white: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit... * The number of undocumented immigrants is much lower than that: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/us/illegal-immigrants-population-study.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/us/illegal-immigrants-pop...

tbabb 7y ago

Ancient Greece, too.

HarryHirsch 7y ago
And the Jewish nation.
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  Jews 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 ago
  There 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.

oarabbus_ 7y ago

You said all the other answers simply betray personal value systems, and not to crucify your list, but your list is essentially one of (Northern) Euro nations, plus Japan. Then you cite poetic, philosophical, artistic, and scientific achievement as your criteria, but leave out countries like India, Russia, and China. Could you explain your rationale here?

52-6F-62 7y ago
I jotted it down in seconds and have limited experience with some parts of the world. India absolutely has one of the longest poetic traditions and it fascinates me endlessly. I’d have been remiss to say that’s all that qualifies in my mind. That’s why I said it was not at all the end of what I’d consider an intellectual society. I’m hesitant to bring present-day Russia into it as I qualified with “continuing”. I say this as someone who studied Russian literature when I was younger. Again, please don’t discount my qualifiers above. It was by no means a survey list—just meant to illustrate my main point with societies I do have experience with.
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  Thanks for the explanation. I realize that my post may have come off as antagonistic (the downvotes from others certainly seem to suggest that), but really I was just trying to understand your rationale. I edited my post to hopefully sound less antagonistic.
  - seamyb88 7y ago
    Don't worry about down votes. You can replenish all with a witty quip. You can also undo the replenishing with a witty quip. Don't worry about down votes. I look for the down-voted, as the controversial ones are where I like to start. I'll give you an upvote because I've been to India for academic purposes.
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  India is a difficult country for outsiders to gauge its level of intellectual culture. I know India has an ancient tradition of religious learning and philosophy based on the study of texts. It has produced 20th-century novelists that are known the whole world over. And yet when I spent a year traveling all over India, there seemed to be so few bookshops even in upper-class districts, and so little reading in public. I could only conclude that reading and the intellectual life was the pursuit of only a small minority, but because of India’s huge population, even that small minority was large enough to be self-sustaining and make its impact, even if it was rather hidden away from sight.

prewett 7y ago

I don't think that celebration of the arts and science is a good metric of pro-intellectual culture. The US does all these things, too. It has a shorter history, though, so it has a smaller amount of cultural works (but you said celebration, anyway). I think pro-intellectual culture is one that values thoughtful questioning, including of the status quo. Opinions are required to have a good argument; dogma (religious, political, technical, or otherwise) is not acceptable. It's G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis instead of fundamentalists; it's The Federalist Papers instead of "the free market fixes all problems"; it's original Agile instead of process-Agile; it's real Hungarian notation instead of MS-docs-"Hungarian" notation.

52-6F-62 7y ago
I agree. My answer needed more qualifiers.
adventured 7y ago
> The US does all these things, too. It has a shorter history, though An important point that is being almost universally ignored here. The history of a modern, organized US is about 150 years old at this point. Anything prior to the Civil War is a baby-level of development, hopeful, maybe, could be, nation just learning how to crawl. It's rather absurd that the US is being browbeaten in this thread against cultures that have existed for many hundreds of years or more; in some cases a thousand plus years. The US has shifted from being ~80% white European-descendant culturally to being 55%-60% (in real terms, as the US has ~25 million illegal immigrants that are never net leaving, and they contribute culturally to the pool) in the span of 40x years, with a massive injection of Asian and Latin-American-Hispanic cultures since the early 1970s. With the point being, the US isn't even remotely close to being a settled, well established cultural structure. Who knows what it will or won't become in 200 more years.
- zenhack 7y ago
  Your numbers are way off: * The US is still 70+% white: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit... * The number of undocumented immigrants is much lower than that: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/us/illegal-immigrants-population-study.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/us/illegal-immigrants-pop...