Anti-Intellectualism is the topic of today’s maundering, and most of this is going to be links for me to look at later, when I’m interested in buying books.
What started me on this path of investigation was a prolonged discussion with a pastor, whom I suspect of being an anti-intellectual. In the course of hunting around for background material I came across a wealth of material out there, and discovered that I’m probably interested in it all – “religious antirationalism, populist antielitism, and unreflective instrumentalism, or the tendency to value thought only for its practical or material yield,” and the list goes on. Guess I’m in for some deep reading over the winter. Anti-Intellectualism in American Media: Magazines and Higher Education, by Dane S. Claussen, is a derivative work, based largely upon that of Hofstadter (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life), with additional research. Hofstadter is probably the deeper source here, but at 400+ hardbound pages, the work for the serious student… and I’ve had to read Hofstadter before, way back in A.P. European History in High School, so I’m familiar with the quality of work there. Or, I suppose I could dig more deeply into the Religious aspects in Full Gospel, Fractured Minds?: A Call to Use God’s Gift of the Intellect … if I really wanted to go there, and if I wanted to spend another long afternoon arguing with a pastor.
Which I don’t. Which is why I’ll perhaps bring a more complicated knitting project to church, so that I’m less able to listen to the man, and more able to tune out the stupidity.
Or perhaps I’ll become a Quaker, where there are no pastors.
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