Intellectuals and Society

In this 2010 book, Thomas Sowell defines intellectuals and the intelligentsia, then discusses their impact on society.  To him, an intellectual is a person whose output is ideas.  Whereas an engineer might build a bridge, an intellectual will produce ideas.  The intelligentsia are followers of the intellectuals and provide a path for dissemination of the ideas the intellectuals produce.  For most of history, intellectuals had little impact on society.  Firstly, society was usually illiterate, so the ideas mostly stayed in the cloistered realm of the intellectuals.  Starting in the 18th century, those ideas began to seep into the general populace and get adopted.  The problem with ideas is that they have no effective feedback loop for the intellectuals who propose them.  Karl Marx paid no price for his disastrous ideas.  Indeed, his ideas are still in circulation despite an uninterrupted series of failures whenever a country tries to implement them.

All too often, intellectuals who are expert in one field offer commentary on fields where they do not have expertise.  Many intellectuals were in favor of World War I, especially since President Wilson, former dean of Princeton, was an intellectual himself.  However, after the war, such pro-war ideas were extremely unpopular.  Soon, the intellectuals were proposing unilateral disarmament and painting war as the enemy.  France and England paid the price for implementing such policies when Hitler started World War II.  They were unprepared and spent several years suffering defeats before the tide finally turned.  Had they used the older idea of 'If you desire peace, prepare for war,' things would have been much different.  Another example he offers was when a police commissioner warned that a given ruling would cause crime to increase.  At the time, crime had been on a steady path down, with murders at half what they had been 30 years before.  The judges implemented their policy preference and, ten years later, the murder rate had doubled.

Dealing in ideas, intellectuals have rhetorical skills far beyond those of your average person.  Often, an intellectual can carry the argument simply because of such rhetorical skills even if the proposed idea was counterproductive.  A skilled debater can often win either side of an argument.  A person who has spent years gaining experience in a field and has more practical knowledge on a subject may not have the ability to verbalize that.  On those occasions when someone might provide a good counterargument, the modern intellectual all too often resorts to "verbal virtuosity."  The counterargument need not be answered because the person voicing it is sexist, racist, etc.

Intellectuals tend to be in academia and are generally in certain fields.  Colleges of engineering, medicine, business, economics, and sports tend not to have as many intellectuals.  Many of these people are as highly educated, but there are feedback loops.  Bad ideas in medicine lead to sickness and death.  Bad ideas in engineering have collapsing buildings and bridges.  Bad ideas in political science can be blamed on the politician who implemented it rather than the professor who proposed it.  Intellectuals are more often on the left than the right.

An excellent book and highly recommended.