With or Without Ideas

We are each an amalgam of failings, incapacities and cosmic incompletion. We often define ourselves by confrontation with our most serious limitations. But this is no reason to keep from pursuing a vigorous exploration of our existence. Every instant is a new universe in Time. Every element of reality is passed from one moment to the next through its effects or its stasis, which will also generate effects. The whole of reality is ever-evolving, ever-changing, in a sense unknowable. It is not so much that everyone accepts this, but that it is now demonstrable, whether by the social sciences, by biological research, systems ecology, or by quantum physics. What persists, what is constant, exists in the world of ideas, and even there, our ideals are subject to challenges emanating from all corners of the human experience.

The 'postmodern' has often been described as being immersed in this pandemic unknowability and so afflicted by the assertion that all values are equal. Not so. No serious postmodern thinker or scientist maintains this assertion, or wants to. What can be asserted, however, is that with the knowledge we have of unknowability, we can forbid discrimination against individuals as being essentially inferior. We can understand the real peril of presumptuous or prejudicial thinking. By engaging in an open study of each case as it comes, we are able to overcome strict categorizations that lead to bias, thus confirming the most enlightened modern propositions.

Due to the difficulty of interpreting our multifaceted (postmodern, democratic, 'globalized', diverse [however naturally so], developing / developed, natural / artificial) world, many people simply opt for the false position which states that all the details of fact in today's society (social policy, politics, ecology, diplomacy, crime and punishment, etc.) aren't their 'kind of thing'… as if one could opt out of society, opt out of intellect… as if silence within democracy weren't a subtle danger to oneself, as if the use of 'legal tender', (as of the goods, services and processes to which it provides access), weren't a contract to interact with (be thoughtful about, critical of, vital to) the system around us, which dictates all of our choices and possibilities.

A culture of detachment evolves from this tendency, a widespread if diffuse effort to affirm the right to stay 'clean' of unpleasant subjects and/or tense 'examination' anxieties (an academic manifestation of performance anxiety). We refer to psychologically healthy adults, especially those with traumatic pasts, as 'well-adjusted', but we don't make an effort (at all levels of government, education and payscale) to instill a sense of pertinence to each individual. Popular culture encourages the limiting of one's knowledge of the real world, through an accumulation of entertainment-oriented psychological commitment and spiritual bargaining.

A feeling of tentative alienation natural in children ('this is not my world'), which also leads to the power structures appropriate to childhood, is cultivated in the adult world through a system of alienation and degradation, creating among despondent adults a culture of general social malaise that paints almost any level of 'extracurricular' (or specifically curricular, i.e. academic) involvement in the function and progress of society as a hassle best left to 'professional politicians', so-called 'opinion-makers', and 'captains of industry'.

The conversation pours forth, but without the necessary consideration for the meaning of life at the individual level. The problem is then worsened by the perception that so little of this conversation is 'my kind of thing' that anyone who engages in discussing such unpleasantries is therefore also equally unpleasant, alien, uninteresting, to be fled, trusted or not trusted, and never engaged.

It is the tragic disaffection of a culture that refers to itself as privileged that underscores this problem. Privilege, in the broadest sense, is often interpreted as meaning that any personal preference is deserved by right of privilege, and that any aspect of human existence is openly subject to such categorizations and such preference. While one may choose among hot-dogs, tofu and pineapples, this is not so of thought, and those who believe it is do so at their own peril.

There is no human world without ideas. Abstract ideas are not alien to the simplest, most basic human reality. Conscious perception of the world does not exist without ideas. There cannot be a distinction between people who care about ideas and people who don't. This common rhetorical separation is a lie. Without sound humanitarian, enlightened and learned ideas, there are only other, less useful, less accurate, more destructive ones.

Navigational Tools (Point of View)

The human world is a symbolic and intellectual morass, full of open sources of knowledge, experience, philosophy, technology and proposition, all of which rain down on us at no cost, allowing us to do more, dream more, accomplish more than at any prior time. So much comes to us from history that the present can be an overwhelming, deafening roar of multiplicity. To many, it seems as if simply choosing a course, or the equipment to make the journey through life, is a stress far greater than the benefit gained by learning and making informed choices.

Moving through the world requires navigational tools, navigational systems, a process of incessant learning and re-imagining, so the pursuit of knowledge is inherently human. One of the crucial extrusions of vastness and multiplicity is choice as a means of navigation. Choice is not necessarily freedom. Within the challenging situation of postmodern humanity, new horizons, new thresholds of knowledge, savoir-faire, identification and expression, present themselves relentlessly.

The nature of the free will of the human mind means that the entire process of navigating human reality may at any time be called into question, as being more or less valuable, more or less identical to the individual… and yet some variation of the process is absolutely necessary and unnavoidable… the human mind organizes itself around this function, in one way or another, leaving the ultimate question looming: how much energy is one willing to devote to building a better mind, to navigating more efficiently? In the course of living, navigating, one will have to ask of one's study of the world and its possible manifestations: Will it bring a more stable emotional life? Will it bring the elements of success which may or may not be required within one's spirit?

But these are not the only questions one faces. Questioning, interrogation of experience itself, is inherent in human experience, and the process is wont to lead to suspicions about the underlying reality of many assumptions and inferences common to everyday consciousness. This constant persistence of doubt can be difficult, even emotionally jarring, and inspires many to turn to other intellectual programs for navigating reality, namely dogma, personal taste, or even the false openness of moral relativism.

A common assumption: that finding a way to feel better is a change for the better… but no, caring more about more issues, that is the change for the better. If life is to be enjoyed, it must matter, in all its innocence and brutality, its vastness and unknowable ineffability.

No matter how many thoughts you have, you can always have more… no matter how convinced you are, you can always think something different. This is a scientific fact. It must be dealt with. People need to understand and accept this healthful openness of the human mind, lest ignorance of the most entrenched sort take hold and undermine the gains of civilization so far. (Calvino 9)

A breakdown in communicative human intelligence occurs when too large a segment of any population refuses to engage… this neglect of intellect, and of the freedoms and privileges it affords, actually endangers ordinary people and their perceived freedoms, making them 'invisible' to sweeping social powers. This neglect serves as the logical foundation for a 'benign neglect' of real human interest and corrodes the quality of social frameworks that create prosperity and protect individual liberty.

Fate, Victimization & Sovereignty

Is there such a thing as fate? The destiny that our lived experience becomes stems from choices, informed or otherwise. The horror of a criminal violation of one's being is that the victim is deprived of choice, deprived of humanity, denied the dignity of the use of free will.

Sovereignty is one of the fundamental principles of free will. To be sovereign is to govern oneself, to have no overarching constrictive power encroaching on one's choices. Sovereignty is a fundamental necessity for the preservation of human dignity, the power of the individual and the possibility of the free use of one's intellect.

In order to maintain one's sovereignty, it is necessary to navigate the world with an optimal blend of knowledge and trust. But trust is only really trust, only effective, if it stems from informed decision. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. This doesn't mean a life of suspicion and mistrust, but rather a willingness to look, to see, to bear witness, and to question one's lived reality. "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." (Emerson) And with the strength of the intellect, one is able to navigate wisely through the symbolic morass of the human world, and to be free.

One has to ask if there is an aversion to freedom itself, to the liberty that comes with knowledge, if sovereignty is intimidating to people who, for whatever reason, do not feel whole in themselves, people who remain uncertain about the integrity of their minds and who abstain from the active study of the world.

Plato, in Protagoras, reminds us that Know thyself is the wisest of all teachings. There are a number of very complex reasons why this simple teaching resonates through all ages and pertains to all cultures, but one is most important: we create our own fate through choice. The knowledge we bring to those choices is what determines their profit or peril to us and to those around us.

Even the decision not to make a choice constitutes a choice, the ever-present, though often risky, choice of abstinence. It is vital to know about the world in which we live, about the ideas and the history that have shaped it, about the structures that govern the shape of our everyday freedom, in order to know how to interact with that world, and about what path most appropriately serves our best intentions and our private aspirations.

Do we have an academic culture?

Do we live in culture that prizes academic achievement? Does our culture value highly a speculative, meditative or examined life? It would be a difficult claim to make, and yet we find broad expressions of outrage about the quality of teaching, and the pitfalls that come with inadequate education. Perhaps for practical or financial reasons, people want good education for their children. In many ways, our society assigns a benefit of wealth to ascending levels of education, on average. There should be reverence for the learned and for those who convey knowledge to students at all levels.

Instead we have an endemic skepticism and even disapproval of 'intellectual' activity… the notion common among schoolchildren that schoolwork and study is not only dull and extraneous but useless, is supported by the culture; the adults who provide the school system also provide the framework within which school is easily put aside. Is this because academic achievement is valued only for its supposed economic benefits, and not as a means to shaping a better intellect, a better person, a better life?

How would things change if an emphasis were placed on the danger of having no ideas or of misapplying good ones?

One has to ask if the popular suspicion of intellectual activity is a product of a fear of the unknown, if it is somehow parochial, as with puritanical witch-hunts in colonial America, or perhaps even a residue of the crimes of McCarthyism. Marx was an intellectual, and intellectuals have a troubling habit of questioning the State, and so there must be something for good patriotic people to fear in the activities of 'intellectuals', as if they were another species, a fleet of invaders, an irrelevant mob trying to distort and undermine the finer aspects of general, uniform or nostalic culture. Nevermind the threat to democracy; nevermind the inherent fraud of a democratic leader questioning dissent.

The framers of American democracy were intellectuals, philosophers and dissidents, and yet, there persists a profound misunderstanding of the gap between intellectuals and those who make claims on their ideas… the study of communism as social theory and the 20th century implementation of certain communist ideas under totalitarian conditions are not parallel activities. One leads to understanding and reinforces democracy; one seeks the absence of any desire for understanding and annihilates every spectre of democracy. Intellect is the basis of the democratic life. It is precisely the attitudes of anti-intellectual forces that lead to undemocratic societies like so many of the worst of the 20th century.

Anti-intellectual bias leads straight to hypocrisy. The purpose of intellectual pursuit, as a career or at the individual level, is an examination of the intellect, of ideas and their correspondence to reality (both physical and metaphysical), in the interest of improving the life of individual human beings within the broader human condition.

Everyone wants to achieve the best possible solutions to certain aspects of their reality. To argue against free, studious, and probing thought, and then to argue against the discussion or dissemination of the ideas that stem from such thought, is to argue against achieving the best solutions. Any system will become hollow and will tilt toward collapse, if it moves against free, unfettered intellectual pursuit. As before, there is no human world without ideas.

The real danger of hypocrisy stems not from the mere dishonesty of behaving contrary to one's word, but from the fruits of that dishonesty. A lie is one thing, not necessarily leading to further underhanded behavior. Hypocrisy, on the other hand, emerges only when underhanded behavior already exists, running counter to claims made by the acting person. This, unlike a lie which can generate feelings of guilt, actually generates a diminishing or erasure of conscience. This is the true danger of hypocrisy, that while it occurs, it acts as a permission-process for precisely the activity its first half has sworn off. It diverts attention, then acts immediately; it is a deliberate, cynical, and malicious attack on the trust of the audience.

Are we an academic culture? Do we want a better system of education? Do we not long for the high democratic aspiration of universal higher education, and for the immense social benefits that come with it? Should we be wary of some unnamed ulterior motives supposedly inherent to intellectuals? Should we seek money first and deem the 'academic' vapid or irrelevant, for our convenience? Should we fear ignorance? Might the greatest danger lie in average individuals opting out of intellectual life, wanting to bend intellectual icons to their narrow political will? Does a general malaise stem from aversion to study, thought and knowledge?

Culture & Resilience: a redefinition of wealth

Knowledge is wealth in its purest form, fully possessed by the individual, and inseparable therefrom. As noted above, the application of deliberately obtained knowledge to complex situations establishes the soverignty of the individual. Variety is wealth insofar as it offers an array of options which may be combined in countless ways to confront the problems of living in the world. Variety in knowledge offers adaptability, and adaptability is the key to survival and propserity at all levels.

Without variety, there would be only pure uniformity. All of existence would be one: one mass, with no constituent particles, with no variation of properties, no mobility and no place to go besides. Without the interaction among particles, among diverse materials and beings, nothing of the universe we know could exist. It is the collision, the mechanics, the action and reaction, the combination and differentiation among existent bodies that makes life, gravity, beauty, freedom and invention possible. Within the intelligent recourse to variety, there exists for humanity a maximum possibility for resilience in changing and adverse conditions. Inherent in this variety of choice is not only existence, but the possibility of freedom. Choice is not freedom as such, but together with intellect, offers its possibility.

Eloquence is wealth, as it represents an intelligent sorting and refinement of vastly diverse ideas and elements of the surrounding world, offering clarity, harmony, and again, the possibility of freedom, through the use of cultural knowledge and variety for the most inventive yet apt expression of human reality. It could be said that all social ills are the direct result of insufficient communicative agreements between and among individual people and the constituents they represent, whatever the political structure within which those ills arise. It could be said that most political structures are the direct result of insufficient eloquence, having lead to the use of force where it would otherwise not be suggested at all.

Culture, the vague and potent mix of ideas, traditions, changes, principles, language, will and expression, which defines all civil structures and all human communication, to some degree, is an abstract category within which we conceptualize the intelligent diversity of a society. The more numerous the contributions, the more tolerant and open the means of administering and delivering cultural expressions of all sorts, the more knowledge there is available, the more possibility for new directions there is, the more resilient a system of human interaction within which those cultural expressions occur, will be.

This may appear to be a redefinition of wealth, but it represents nothing more than honest thought about thought itself and its vital and unimpeachable role in every individual human being's life and navigation through life.

© 2002 Joseph Robertson

Works Cited

1. Calvino, Italo. The Uses of Literature.
2. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Self-Reliance". Excerpted at Casavaria.com.
3. Simic, Charles. The World Doesn't End. Harvest Books, Harcourt Brace & Company. New York. 1989.