the pop intellectual as anti-christ

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ThePop Intellectualas Antichrist

HENRY WINTHROP

1. THEMISSIONOFTHE NTELLECTUAL

The term "intellectual" once implied a man of knowledge and com-

petence in social analysis, an individual who was consumed with a

passion both for social justice and a humane and rational social order.

The intellectual was adept at cutting through the mythos of his culture

and in exposing the shams and hypocrisies of his society. He was

sophisticated about the political currents of his time - currents which

may have nauseated him but which, he felt, one had to understand,deal with and try to circumvent,if one wished to know politically what

the limits of the possible were. The intellectual also knew somethingof natural science, not in terms of what the expert would demand and

expect but rather in terms that could be considered meaningful to a

serious, intelligent, interested and educated layman. He was certain to

be steeped in the literature of social criticism and he could be expectedto be familiar with some of the classic works in what would now be

called the behavioral and social sciences. He did some reading in the

output of professionaland academic social scientists that was executed

in the logico-empiricaltradition.The intellectual was more likely, how-

ever, to have read and been influenced by Marx, Weber, Pareto, Veblen

or Freud and have absorbed these authors both wisely and well. He

made the leading ideas of such figures part of the warp and woof ofhis own inner being. His knowledge of them was deep and extensive,his grasp of their ideas, succinct, and he would have had little patience

HENRY WINTHROP is a professor in the department of interdisciplinary socialsciences at the University of South Florida, Tampa. In addition to articles onthe social sciences he has written Ventures in Social Interpretation.




212 HENRYWINTHROP

with the degradation of ideas that came from name-dropping and

cocktail-partypalaver.The authentic intellectual read extensively in literature, becomingabsorbed both in the Western classical, literary legacy and in the best

of contemporary iterature.He also showed an interest in the arts, find-

ing it worthwhile to be au courant if he felt that what he viewed and

listened to enhanced the individual's horizons of consciousness.Above

all, the authentic intellectual was a man of parts, with respect to vital

information and skill at analysis,with respect to a sense of social value

and social concern, with respect to personal morality and personal in-

tegrity and with respect to independenceof thought. Whether or not he

was popularly understood or appreciated, he served a socially needed

anda socially useful function, and from Plato to Ortega y Gasset his

lineage has been a respectableone. He was, above all, an educational

guide to the human condition and in fitting himself for such a leader-

ship role, he imposed upon himself a discipline,set forth by Hamerton,1that was monasticallyrigorous n its demands.

Lord Grey had remarked that after 1914 the lights went out all over

Europe. He meant, of course, the light of everyday civilization and ex-

pected social stability.At the end of World War I the lights also beganto go out in the campsand coteriesof Western intellectuals. It is difficult

to date the eclipse of the intellectual's trademarks,since irrationalbe-

havior and zany movements by self-styled intellectuals were exhibited

even in the nineteenthcentury,

asGrafia2

has shown. In their time these

intellectuals were not taken seriouslyby the public. One can, however,

begin arbitrarily,I think, with the anguish of Jules Benda, if only be-

cause the intellectuals of his time were taken seriouslyby the public.In 1927 Julien Benda published in Paris La Trahison des Clercs,pub-lished in the United States as The Betrayalof the Intellectuals.3Benda's

"clerk"was the disinterestedthinker, the individual who pursuestruth

and knowledge and refusesto bend his interests to the supportof polit-ical passions. For Benda the average man's morality gave support to

aggressiveness,power-seeking,conflict and war. In our complex West-

ern society these sins take their origin, all too often, in the expression

1 Philip G. Hamerton, Intellectual Life (Boston: Little, Brown, 1902).2Julien Benda, The Betrayal of the Intellectuals (Boston: The Beacon Press,

1955).3

Cesar Grafia, Modernity and Its Discontents (French Society and the FrenchMan of Letters in the Nineteenth Century) (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).Originally published in 1964 by Basic Books, Inc. under the title BohemianVersus Bourgeois.




THEPOP INTELLECTUALS ANTICHRIST 213

of political passions and in the spite that so frequently derives from

value-conflicts,both of individuals and of groups. The true mission ofthe intellectual, for Benda, is to oppose the average man's morality that

so nakedly and unashamedlymakes a virtue of individual and group

egocentricitiesand ruthlessselfishness.

Central to the mission of the intellectual, as Benda saw it, is to opposethis morality of the masses with a morality of abstractprinciplesof jus-tice that will burst into flame in supportof concrete and suffering indi-

viduals and groups. The intellectual's morality is a morality of "dis-

interestedness" n the best sense of that word. It strives continually to

transform the world's ignoble morality of conflict and of the expressionof group passions into a more humanitarian one. The intellectual can

do this in two ways. The most virtuousof all the paths open to himfor

the expressionof the needed abstract,although clearlyhumane,moralitywhich it is his function to ennoble and keep alive and effective, is

through personaldedication in his own life, to justice and principle and

to a variety of social ideals which, if carried out, will bring humanitycloser to a more perfect social order. A second way is to perform all

those actions which will transform Jedermann's morality into the

spirituallyand communally elevated morality which is the best expres-sion of social altruism and the religious impulse. This second form of

moral authenticity can, itself, be expressed in one of two ways. One

is to denounce from the housetops the immorality of the group ego-centricities and

political passionsof men. This is the

wayof

Jesusand

the biblical prophets. The other is to enter into the groups and com-

munities created by the masses and to bore from within, so to speak,

seekingto inspireconfidenceamongmen while quietlybut firmlymaking

every effort to muffle and transform the layman's savage morality of

struggle and expropriation into the morality of justice, brotherhood

and humanitarian social order. This second method is, of course, that

of the organizedChurch.

Benda felt that the intellectuals of his time were taking neither of

these two methods. Instead, they were introjecting the values of the

morality of struggle and political passions. They were encouraging the

principlesof abstract

justiceand humane disinterestedness o be

despisedby men and even to be opposed by them. In short, they were espousing

cryptic forms of Social Darwinismin social contexts and making virtues

out of the political passions.The moralityof dedicationwas being turned

abreactively nto its opposite. In Benda'stime the official umbrella under




214 HENRYWINTHROP

which the political passionsmarched and raged were solely ideological.

They were transformed into their opposites through Nu-Think and inthe name of the exploited proletariat.In our time the morality of dedi-

cation is still being rejected and still being justified through ideologicalrationalizations. In addition, that morality is also being rejected byvariousmodes of secession from the world via communityseparatisma posturewhich, at first glance, seems to be a concrete expressionof the

abstractmorality for which Benda called, until one notes that most of

the experimental communes of our time turn their backs on the prob-lems of the largersociety. These communesreflectvarious types of anti-

establishmentcredos which justify social unconcernby a shallow and an

empty rhetoric of self-fulfillment.The figures who come closest to the

dedication Bendasought are neither the intellectuals

ofour

time nor

the leaders of experimental communes.They are, I think, those intelli-

gent and civic-minded individuals who are to be found associatedwith

such movements as John Gardner'sCommon Cause, with the Citizens

for Local Democracy, with the National Urban Coalition and with

Ralph Nader's Center for the Study of ResponsiveLaw. All such indi-

viduals are giving expressionto the great, Greek ideal of paideia, which

held that a truly educated man was one who not only devoted time to

self-improvementbut who also lent his talents to the social and cultural

perfectingof the communityin which he lived and throughwhich he ex-

pressedhis being.

Benda indictedthe intellectuals of his

daybecause

theywere

betray-ing their true mission. It would be easy to see Benda's weltanschauungas a rationalizationfor an ivory-tower philosophy of escape from the

madding crowd's ignoble strife. But this would be a mistake. Benda,

himself, in fact, at a somewhat later date, took part in protests and

demonstrations.He did so, however, to expressthe sincerityof his oppo-sition to all forms of immoral antihumanitarianismrather than to ex-

presspolitical partisanship.He never abandonedhis vision of the mission

of the intellectual nor his notion of the intellectual and spiritual dis-

ciplines to which the intellectual had to subject himself in order to

fulfill his role of thoughtful guide, moral leader and disinterested

critic of the follies of men.

Benda wanted men of learning, artists and philosophers, to fashion

a culture which would universalizethe virtue of disinterestednessand a

morality of brotherhood. Furthermore, he recognized that the qualityof disinterestedness ould not be effective without restingon the founda-

tion supports of knowledge and analytical acuity. But these were the




THE POP INTELLECTUALS ANTICHRIST 215

objectives that Benda felt were being betrayed by the clerksof his time.

It was hard, he said, to imagine them reversing their own tendenciestowards intellectual decadence, when they sneered at rationality and

a nonpartisanmorality.He noted that the clerksof his time rejected the

virtues of intellectual disinterestednessand found such a rejection the

equivalent of "being realistic." In so doing, he could not help fallinginto a mood of pessimisticdespair.

The extent to which the modem intellectual has been abandoningmore and more of the virtues inherent in the traditional profile of the

intellectual has continued to be a point of criticism of many other

writers, among them Aron,4 Molnar5 and Viereck.6 The intellectual's

abandonment of his true mission has undergone a noticeable evolution

from aliterary approach

madeby

the intellectuals in the twenties to

the most complex social problemsof our time, through the left-leaningorientations of the thirties and forties, to the open espousal of the nu-

merous forms of irrationality of the fifties and early sixties, climaxed

finally by political infantilisms of the New Left, psychedelic binges of

the consciousness-expansionbuffs, and returns to witchcraft, astrologyand the varied religiouscultismsof the present.

2. CONTEMPORARYECESSIONROMTHEWESTERNNTELLECTUALRADITIONS

In our time we have produceda plethora of writers who regardthem-

selves as intellectuals but who are lacking the two basic intellectual re-

quirementsfor this role, namely, a wide fund of knowledge, some of itin depth, and those skills of analysiswhich are the sine qua non for the

authentic understandingof issues. These are two of the cardinal intel-

lectual sins emphasizedby Benda. Some of the intellectuals who would

be coveredby this indictment are essentially iteraryand artistic figures;others are more involved with the world of ideas and with political and

social action. A good example of an intellectual who is chiefly literary,

although partly involved with ideas and political action, and who is, at

the same time, lacking the two basic requirements I have just men-

tioned, is Norman Mailer. Mailer is no blushing violet when it comes

to free-lancing along almost any line, regardlessof his fitness for doing

so.Lasch

has pointed out that the scope of Mailer's literary ambitions4Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals (New York: W. W. Norton,

1962).5Thomas Molnar,The Decline of the Intellectual (Clevelandand New York:World,1961), Meridian Books.

6 Peter Viereck, Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals, Babbit Jr. vs. theRediscovery of Values (New York: Capricorn Books, 1965). Originallypublishedby Beacon Pressin 1953.




216 HENRYWINTHROP

has enlarged to the point where he freely comments,without the neces-

sary information or expertise, on "everythinghe finds in the slightestdegree distasteful: pacifists, liberals, modem architecture, Hollywood,

experimental theater, homosexuals, masturbation,David Riesman, beat-

niks, psychoanalysis, 'minor' writers, book reviewers, fallout shelters, 'the

Establishment's defense of life,' organized labor, mental health, motels,

science, people who refuse to admit that bombs can be beautiful, peoplewho drop bombs on other people, television, and cancer."7

But that is not all. Mailer's cultural and political passions have been

known to render him singularly favorable to publicly expressed forms of

irrationality. Brustein8 has described a scene that took place when the

Theatre for Ideas, a private group, arranged a symposium on the sub-

ject,Theatre or

Therapy,at a

meetingnear

Gramercy Park,N.Y.

Brustein was part of a panel that included Nat Hentoff, Paul Goodman,

Julian Beck and Judith Malina. He describes the pandemonium that

broke out at this meeting when disagreements occurred and when ideas

were expressed that some of those present did not relish. He tells us

that there was constant shouting and that obscenities were hurled at

one another by people both on stage and in the audience. An incredible

example of emotionality was exhibited by Rufus Collins, a black mem-

ber of the company, who kept on shouting impassioned obscenities at

everyone and everything that was being said, with which he could not

agree. Paul Goodman was trying to make the point that one could not

blame all our socialpathology

ontechnology, only

to have Collins shout

repeatedly "Fuck technology. Fuck technology." Brustein goes on:

Mailer applauded loudly and conspicuously....

Suddenly, the wave of bodies in the aisle parted. Norman Mailer had

risen, and was strutting toward the platform, pitching and rolling like a

freighter in a heavy sea. He was wearing a well-made dark blue suit with a

vest, and his face was flushed. He grabbedone of the mikes."I was one of those that applauded when Mr. Black over there said 'Fuck

technology'- so I'm not going to use this thing." He laid the mike on the

pew beside him. "I'm forty-six years old. I've got a strong voice, but I don't

want to waste it. So I want you all to listen, and listen hard." Some of the

tumult subsided."This is a tough town," Mailer continued, "the toughest town in the

world. Because if you think you're tough, there's always somebody who'stougher. Remember that!" The tumult was beginning again. "Now I've got a

message for Mr. Black over there. You've got no surprises, and you haven't

7 Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism in America, 1889-1893, The Intel-lectual as a Social Type (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), pp. 334-35.

8 Robert Brustein, "Monkey Business," New York Review of Books (April 24,1969) 43-46.





hadanysince the FrenchRevolution. 've seenall thisjacqueriebefore,manytimesbefore.Get it? J-a-c-q-u-e-r-i-e it's a punin caseyou don't know t."This punwas lost on mostof the audience, ncludingme [pp. 596, 600].

This brief excerpt, I think, illustrates fairly well one intellectual's

penchant for irrationality.Between Lasch's characterization of Mailer

and Brustein'sdescription of his conduct, we discover two of the basic

intellectual responsibilitiesfor which Benda pleaded, going down the

drain.

Many modern intellectuals prefer the broad canvas of free-wheeling

interpretation of social patterns to the painstaking tasks of empiricalresearch and close-knit analysis. Oversimplification of complex social

matters and an ever-present tendency to fail to provide evidence for

one's theses-both of which would have been abhorredby

Benda-

are two of the conspicuous traits of Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan's

central thesis, "the medium is the message," is that the media alter

senseratios or patternsof perception. These alterationsradicallychangehuman nature for, according to McLuhan, if the environment changesthen the human psyche, itself, is transformed. All aspects of the Amer-

ican community- economic, social, cultural, educational, political-

are what they are because of the "boob tube," the radio, the printing

press and other mass media, with the emphasis, however, on television.

Our electronic gadgets, as such, according to McLuhan, produce the

characteristicsof American culture, as we know it, and not the content

of their programs.It is the technical characteristicsof these inventions,

says McLuhan, which have fashioned that exceedingly complex thingknown as American culture. It seems incredible that so many of Mc-

Luhan's aficionados can allow so monolithic a notion of the cause of so

complex a thing as American society to go unchallenged. And yetMcLuhan has furnished little experimental evidence for his thesis and

for some of its corollaries,such as his assertion that the political char-

acter of our society is determined by its "media mix." Roszak has de-

scribedMcLuhan's ideas as a Thomistic systematizationof our society'sfunk culture and for thisreasonhe has characterizedMcLuhan's weltan-

schauungas a Summa Popologica.9In a symposium edited by Stearn,l1 Christopher Ricks has called

McLuhan's style "a viscous fog, through which loom stumbling meta-

9Theodore Roszak, "The Summa Popologica of Marshall McLuhan," NewPolitics. Vol. 5 (Fall 1966), 257-69.

10 Gerald Emanual Steam, ed., McLuhan: Hot & Cool: A Primer for the

Understanding of & a Critical Symposium with a Rebuttal by McLuhan (NewYork: Signet Books, 1967).




218 HENRYWINTHROP

phors"; Ben Lieberman has remarked that "the greatest defect of

McLuhan'stheoryis the complete rejectionof any role for the content ofcommunication";Dan Davin has assertedthat his "style . . . prefers to

rape our attention rather than seduce our understanding,"and Frank

Kermode remarks that "McLuhan substitutes the printing press for

genesisand the dissociation of sensibilityfor the fall." These pithy sum-

mariesand evaluations all rest, I think,on the recognitionof the absence

of empirical support for McLuhan's theses for that obfuscationin ideas

and vocabularywhich marks his work.

In the lack of respectfor the social and cultural importanceof exper-tise and in the welcome he tends to extend to irrationality,a novelist like

Norman Mailer does not stand alone. The entire coterie of writers-

novelists andpoets alike- devoted

tosecession from Western culture,like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg,paddle the same cultural canoe

that Mailer does. In his devotion to grand theory and monolithic theses

with little empirical foundation, McLuhan also does not stand alone. In

his privatization of language, affection for ambiguous ideas that carrya measure of appeal by virtue of their novelty, McLuhan is cultivatingsome of the anti-intellectualtrendsnow spreadingso rapidlythroughoutthe culture of capitalism.But these anti-intellectualtrends,of course,are

being expressedon a relatively high and intellectuallysophisticated evel.In his fondness for a vocabulary,phraseologyand style that are exotic in

nature, although questionablewith respect to their capacity to achieve

public comprehensionof clear

ideas,McLuhan is

onlyone of

manyheralds of what the astrologybuffs among the young are fond of callingthe Age of Aquarius.

Others with the same gifts or, more correctly,intellectually question-able approaches, as those of McLuhan, are such figures as Charles

Reich11with his taxonomy for stages of consciousness-a taxonomythat has little empirical or experimentalsupport.In this groupof super-antirationalists,we may also include Susan Sontag12who protests so

strongly against the demand that dissent and protest be translated into

intellectual terms that can be made subject to public criticism. In her

defense of Camp, Sontag seems to prefer intellectual stylismto intellec-tual

substance,a characteristic that has been noted

by Rieff.l3 John" Charles A. Reich, The Greening Of America (New York: Random House,

1970).12 Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York:

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966).13 Philip Rieff, ed., On Intellectuals: Theoretical Studies/Case Studies (New

York: Doubleday, 1970). See in particular the essay by J. P. Nettl, "Ideas,Intellectuals, and Structures of Dissent," 57-134.





Cage is still another thinker who operates in this vein.14 In his effort

to approach several ideas at once with the polyphonic methods appro-priate for a musical composition that does not quite unify a number of

coequal themes, Cage reveals a vast disdain for the intellectual organi-zation that is so necessary an ingredient in serious intellectual work.

In his penchant for allowing inspirationand good will to dominate the

need to deal with information in depth, there is lacking the intellec-

tual seriousnessrequired for communication to be effective. Finally, in

Cage's attempts to deal with ideas, not by the painstaking methods of

science and logic but rather through vision and intuition, we have still

another example of the manner in which Benda's ideals for the intellec-

tual arebeing abandoned.

Bothmakers

ofliterature and purveyorsof ideas share, in this respect,the abandonment of the qualities of clarity, depth and disinterestedness

in the pursuit of ideas, which, on the intellectual level, constituted the

betrayal that so concerned Benda. The same charges can be leveled

with even more force against many activities of the New Left, againstwriters like Marcuse,l5who champions these weaknessesas virtues and

against a number of writers like Norman Brown6l and Gary Snyder,l7who are idolized by membersof that streamof protest that has come to

be called the counter-culture.Benda, indeed, had more of a propheticvision than he realized, for the anti-intellectual trends that bothered

him in his time were really symptomatic of coming events that were

castingtheir shadowsrather

earlyin this

century.

3. THERISEOFTHEPOPINTELLECTUAL

What, then, is the modem form in which "the betrayalof the intellec-

tuals" occurs? In other words, what are the general characteristicsin

our time of that type of intellectual who demands to be heard when

solutions are sought to our difficult, social problems and who is not

really sufficiently competent to be paid serious attention? This is the

intellectual who ignores the basic data of the social, management and

natural sciences and who is incrediblynaive with respect to the rigorousand painstakingmethods requiredfor social research and social analysis.

4John Cage, A Year from Monday; New Lectures and Writings (Middle-town, Conn. Wesleyan University Press, 1967).

15 Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Ad-vanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).

6Norman 0. Brown, Life against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning ofHistory (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1959).

17 Gary Snyder, Earth Household: Technical Notes & Queries to FellowDharma Revolutionaries (New York: New Directions, 1969).




220 HENRYWINTHROP

It seems most apt in describinghim to refer to him as the pop intellec-

tual. The pop intellectual is the kind of figurewho achieves the greatestinfluence with the average literate citizen when the latter seeks en-

lightenment and a point of view that will provide some insightsinto the

exigencies of social reconstruction.And if the provisionof such enlight-enment and an illuminating point of view are not intellectually taxing,so much the better.

But the pop intellectual is also the type of person who usually knows

very little of the social, management and natural sciences. His thinkingis usually routinized and consists of cliches and shibboleths borrowed

either from liberal or radical groups or from literary or humanistic

groups,whose membersrarelyhave read in original sources. Associated

with these humanistic concernsis a relativelystrongdistastefor technicaland difficult ideas in the social and behavioral sciences. A few pop in-

tellectuals are highly creative and innovative but they generally tend

to function outside of the frameworkof the social, management and

natural sciences. But for most pop intellectuals superficiality s the rule.

If the pop intellectual considers himself a Marxist in his orientation,it will not be uncommon, particularly f he is a member of the younger

generation, to find that he shows little familiarity with the cultural

legacy of the West and few intellectual passions that any disinterested

critic can observe.And yet, because the run-of-the-millpop intellectual

skates on the surfaceof ideas, particularly among some of the dissident

young,and because he is in a

positionto live on the shoulders of intel-

lectual giants, he thinks of himself as a "true" intellectual in Benda's

sense of the word. In this self-imagehe sincerelybelieves that he is one

who will transform the world into a secular, political paradise, if onlyothers will defer to his greater wisdom and clearervision. This is some-

times accompanied by an alienated type of cynicism that is clearly in-

congruous with his sense of mission and which leads to what Simmel

called "theblase attitude."18But because this masqueradesunder slogansand an approved type of name-dropping,most of the pop intellectual's

followers, even less accomplished than himself, do not observe that he

is the polar opposite of the dedicated intellectual who commanded

Benda'sadmiration.

We are accustomed, I think, to expect the intellectual to try to stem

the tides of irrationality n his time. This has been his traditionalmission

for centuries and it was the mission that Benda refused to forget. Irra-

18 For a description of the blase attitude, see George Simmel, "The Metropolisand Mental Life," Kurt H. Wolff, ed., in The Sociology of Georg Simmel (NewYork: The Free Press, 1950), pp. 409-24.





tionality comes, of course,from many sources.It may crop up in secular

conflicts, in theological dogmatisms and in various types of politicalmyths. Often it rearsits head in different forms of elitism, whether that

of a master race or that of being ideological keepersof the gates. More

cryptic forms of elitism occur when marginal, social critics condemn

the general run of mankind for its backwardnessor when a social sci-

entist, who mistakes his "scientism"for scientific purity, rejects all re-

search that does not ape the models of the physical sciences. But no

matter what form of dragon the intellectual takes on, his customary

image is that of the culture hero who is trying to save the world for

reasonand enlightenment.The major, conspicuous rony, of course, is the fact that, in our time,

so many pop intellectuals are so strongly anti-intellectual. This is inno sense a paradox, for it is not the dictionary meanings of the words

"intellectual" and "anti-intellectual" that are important here. It is

rather the social content of these terms that has to concern us. The

term "intellectual" refers to a type which, historically, has displayedcertain intellectual qualities and did battle, in writing, against the in-

justices,hypocrisies, nhumanity, ignorance and folly to be found in the

social order. The term "anti-intellectual" now refers to a certain his-

torical change, for many of our modem intellectuals, particularly those

of the pop variety,are now openly hostile to what were once the virtues

of Benda's "clerk."These figuresnow oppose the virtues that historically

belonged to the intellectual, but for a variety of reasons-suchas

a general interest in ideas, books and the arts and in the social status

still associated with being an intellectual - retain the term "intellec-

tual" as self-designative. They retain the term even though they have

emptied it of its original meanings, in their own behavior. Even more,

they retain the term even where they have supplanted the attributes

to which it refers,with their very opposites. When dealing with a pop

intellectual, one finds that the effort to introduce analysis into almost

any conversation piece is usually resented. Many of the typically self-

christened "intellectuals"of our time habitually deliver non sequitursthat would have staggeredthe students of a pre-World War II college

classroom.Theyare

virginalabout the distinction between the rational

and expressivefunctionsof language. They have a fixed habit of ignor-

ing the difference between a fact and an inference. They will not dis-

tinguish between a descriptive term requiring referents and an evalu-

ative one that is a vicarious imputation. In short, all the linguistic

pitfalls against which general semanticistshave inveighed for more than




222 HENRYWINTHROP

forty years are the constant booby traps of the pop intellectual of our

time.The preceding sin, however, is only the sin of slothfulness n analysis.An even more egregioussin, let us note, is the pop intellectual's indiffer-

ence to facts, information and the basic milestones in the republic of

learning.As Lundberg19has stressed,the literaryintellectual- one cur-

rent variant of the pop form- acts as though he can solve the most

complex social problemswith a deft turn of phrase. The pop intellec-

tual, literaryor otherwise, suffersacutely from an unawareness of com-

plexity. He will take on the most technically complex of social prob-lems with little or no knowledge of the behavioral and social sciences.

Completely unaware that man's social artifacts are really very complex

systemsfor the understandingof which there are time-tested method-ologies- operations research, linear programming,systemstheory, the

econometric model, etc.- the pop intellectual will rush in where

angels fear to tread, at least intellectually.He is smug about his abysmal

ignorance. It is not that there is so much that he does not know but

rather that he knows so very many things that aren't so. He functions

as though superficialitywere a virtue. The name of the game is A Patter

of Information and a Smatter of Ideas.

If you seek to enter into an authentic dialogue with him, in Buber's

sense of this phrase, and if you seek to create an atmosphere for a

genuine, existentialist encounter, he will shy away from the openness

required, by athousand

and one techniques of evasiveness. The popintellectual will discussa figure whose values he detests or whose ideas

he rejects by means of what can rightfullybe christened "the criticism

of the epithet." This is name-calling raised to the dignity of a method

of analysis.As for the pop intellectuals of the New Left, their mode of

argument rests less on the Aristotelian triad and more on what I call

The Triad of Leftist Infantilism. For Aristotle's principles of identity,excluded middle and noncontradiction, the leftist pop intellectual has

substitutedthree other principles: proof by epithet, conviction by repe-tition and refutationby circumlocution.If he writes for the underground

press his prose reflects the attributes of this new triad and, in addition,reflects a

varietyof cultisms that include some

free-wheeling,Marxist

phraseologyand the cant of an ill-understoodand superficiallyhandled

psychoanalysis, the whole sprinkled with obscenities that presumablyreinforcethe strengthof his animadversions.In the whole of his indict-

ments and rages with the system, one would be hard put to find any

19George A. Lundberg, Can Science Save Us? (New York: Longmans, Green,1961).





evidence of his being touched by the cogency of the logico-empirical

traditions of Western science or by his being familiar with any reason-able fraction of the historical and cultural legacy of the West.

The culture of capitalism is now largely the most advanced form of

the culture of an age of science and technology and the culture of an

age of science and technology is increasingly the culture of social com-

plexity. The problems generated by the social complexity of our times

require for their solution an enormous range of information and some

appreciation of the skills of analysis,without both of which the preser-vation and revamping of democracywill be impossible.Yet for many a

pop intellectual the simplistic concepts of a doctrinaire,nineteenth cen-

tury socialismbecome the lever by which he hopes to change the world

and improve the human condition. He sees the key to a future that willtranslate man's dreams of brotherhoodinto social reality, in some vari-

ant of the Marxist credo or some form of philosophical anarchism.

Armed spirituallywith an antibourgeoisoutlook which is accompanied

by some naive sloganeering and some utopian and communal phan-

tasizing,he is convinced that he can transform the culture of capitalisminto a thing of beauty. Protestdemonstrationshave become a habit with

the pop intellectual. The protest demonstration provides him a satis-

fying political beatitude, even if the demonstration which so fiercelycommands his loyalties is unrooted to any detailed solution for the

problem or situation for which the demonstration was called. His dis-

jointed politicaloutlook is sanctified

bya

hippy vocabularyfor

the dis-missal of ideas, containing such time-worn epithets as "fascistpig" and

"squarehangup," as well as the ever-present "youknow" or "dig that,"etc. To be activist and to emote, to fixate at a sophomoriclevel of intel-

lectual development by trying to score debater'spoints, and to dismiss

the corpus of Westernlearningand all of higher education as irrelevant

to the needs of our age - these are among the elements that constitute

the motivational dynamics and political sophistication of the pop in-

tellectual.

But if the truth must be known the range of information and the

skillsof analysisthat will be demanded in the emerging, cybernatedso-

cietyof the future are enormousand will

puta

greaterstrain on demo-

cratic man than any other "systembreak"- to borrow a phrase from

Kenneth Boulding--to which he has ever been subjected. Donald

Michael has given us a presentiment of the intellectual demands that

are likely to be made upon Western man, in just a few short decades.

Michael has put it this way:




224 HENRYWINTHROP

. . . Our schools will probably be turning out a larger proportion of the

populationbetter educated than

theyare

today,but most of our citizens will

be unable to understand the cybernated world in which they live. Perhapsthey will understand the rudiments of calculus, biology, nuclear physics, and

the humanities. But the research realm of scientists, the problems of govern-ment, and the interplay between them will be beyond the ken even of our

college graduates....There will be a small, almost separate, society of people in rapport with

the advanced computers. These cyberneticians will have established a rela-

tionship with their machines that cannot be shared with the average man anymore than the average man today can understand the problems of molecular

biology, nuclear physics, or neuropsychiatry.Indeed, many scholars will nothave the capacity to share their knowledge or feeling about this new man-machine relationship. Those with the talent for the work probably will haveto develop it from childhood and will be trained as intensively as the classical

ballerina.Some of the remaining population will be productively engaged in human-

to-human or human-to-machine activities requiring judgment and a high levelof intelligence and training. But the rest, whose innate intelligence or trainingis not of the highest, what will they do? . . .

Equally taxing will be man's need to adapt to the problems created byhis new environment, using the latter term in its widest sense. Those

problems are so baffling that the National Science Foundation21 reportedto President Nixon in 1971 that science knew too little to control them

adequately. The complexities of merely the physical environment alone

and of man's impact on spaceship earth have been found difficult to

graspbecause of the

inadequaciesof our data and of our

techniquesof

measurement. This situation has been graphically portrayed in the Studyof Critical Environmental Problems (SCEP),22 sponsored by MIT. The

lacks in our knowledge, indicated by this study, exist in spite of the

collective effort of fifty specialists in such fields as meteorology, ocean-

ography, ecology, chemistry, physics, biology, geology, engineering, eco-

nomics, social sciences, and law. Add to this the need to understand the

biological revolution that is just around the corer and which has been

described by Taylor,23 Feinberg24 and others, and the coming effects of

20Donald N. Michael, Cybernation: The Silent Conquest, A Report to theCenter for the Study of DemocraticInstitutions (Santa Barbara:Center for theStudy of Democratic Institutions, 1962), pp. 44-45.

21New York Times News Service, "Science Said Unable to Assess Environ-

ment." The Tampa Tribune, July 6, 1971.

22Reportof the Study of Critical Environmental Problems (SCEP), Man'sImpact on the Global Environment (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1970).

23Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Biological Time Bomb (New York: World,1968).

24 Gerald Feinberg, The Prometheus Project: Mankind's search for long-range goals (New York:Doubleday, 1969).





new developmentsin science, technologyand social invention, portrayed

by Gabor,25and one begins dimly to grasp the avalanche of difficultiesthat are descending upon the head of modern man. Yet in the face of

these difficulties the pop intellectual stands unmoved. He is in this

world but not of it. For him there are no coming events that cast their

shadowsbefore.

The formal education that academia has to offer is basic to the task

of trying to grasp the new world-a-coming. It is not the curriculum

which the moder universityhas to offer which is irrelevant. The irrele-

vance consistsin the fact that this wealth of learning is not made suffi-

ciently germane to the current exigencies of social change, to the need

to reorder our national priorities and to the tasks of promoting and

increasingthe welfare of the national community.The knowledge explo-sion of our time has a large contribution to make towards the solution

of the problems I have just mentioned. The irrelevance of which the

pop intellectual complains, crops up in the specialist'srelative indiffer-

ence to the bearing of the knowledge explosion on questions of social

policy, social planning and the construction of a public philosophy as

well as on the dilemmas that have to be faced in trying to reconstructa

personaland a political morality. In short, it is not the intellectual medi-

cine that is irrelevantto the improvementof our social health but rather

the doctor who spendsa great deal of time in the researchlab- which

is absolutely necessary but far too little time in his office, meeting pa-tients and

practicingmedicine. But the

popintellectual throws out the

baby of learning with the bathwater of the neglect of our social needs

by the learned. Modern man needs more of modern learning, not less.

How much more can be seen from the educational considerations now

to be set forth.

4. WHAT KNOWLEDGE S MOST WORTHWHILE?

Reconstructionof the culture of capitalismnow requiresall educated,

sociallyresponsible,mature, thoughtful and sensitivemen and women to

ask themselves the question "What knowledge is most worthwhile?"

This question, in particular,must be related to the social exigencies of

our time and to the preservationof democracy. The vast expansion ofknowledge in our time has a direct bearing on the formation of a credo

that will be useful for facilitating personal development, on the con-

structionof a meaningful personalmorality and on the task of framing

25Dennis Gabor, Innovations: Scientific, Technological, and Social (London:Oxford University Press, 1970).




226 HENRYWINTHROP

a viable public philosophy. This applicability has been recognized in a

number of books of recent vintage, of which one edited by Sweeney26and one edited by Booth27 llustrate quite cogently the tremendousim-

portance which the increase of knowledge in our time has- and will

continue to have - upon the task of reconstructing the culture of

capitalism.The most authentic attributes for the intelligent reconstruction of

society are the possessionof both detailed knowledge and analytic skills.

Both of these are essential if we are to remold our socially complex,

technologicallybased, mass society in directions that truly meet the ma-

terial, economic and spiritual (i.e., value-seeking) needs of modem man.

Without such knowledge and skills the humanistic, Hebraic-Hellenic

legacyof the West will be

lost. Without such knowledgeand skills a

genuine expressionof the religious impulse- and by the religious im-

pulse I am referringto the quest for brotherhood,justice, social compas-sion and mercy, and the quest for a more perfect, social order- will

have no real roots, not, at least, in an age of science and technology.It is here, in the need to be well informed about social, economic and

political matters that the pop intellectuals of our time fail both them-

selves and society.

They are guilty of these failures because of their ignorance of the

types of learning that are relevant to social and moral reconstruction.

They know little or nothing about the technical aspects of economic

processesof

technologicallyadvanced Western societies.

Theyknow

little or nothing about the work and discoveries of social scientists,where such work and discoveriesare relevant to the remakingof mod-

em society. They are babes in the woods when it comes to a genuine

understandingof the realitiesof modem politics, both its admirableand

its sordid realities. Worst of all, our pop intellectuals suffer from what

a great American writer called "unawarenessof complexity." As a re-

sult the techniquesfor the "democraticmanagement" of our society-

such as input-output analysis, linear programming, statistical decision

theory, the planning and management sciences, cyberneticsand the in-

26Francis Sweeney, S.J. (ed.). The Knowledge Explosion: Liberation andLimitation

(NewYork: Farrar Straus &

Giroux),1966. The

papersin this

volume derived from the Boston College Centennial Colloquium, held on April17-19, 1963.

27Wayne C. Booth (ed.), The Knowledge Most Worth Having (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1967). The papers in this volume were deliveredat a five-day Liberal Arts Conference sponsored by the undergraduate collegeof the University of Chicago, as its contribution to the University's seventy-fifth anniversary celebration.





formation sciences, the mathematical model and econometric analysis,

general systemstheory, etc.-

constitute a vast arena of total ignorancefor most pop intellectuals. Without the type of knowledge and skills of

analysisto which we have just made reference, it is absurd to expect to

reconstruct a modem, complex society based on the social impacts of

science and technology.

John David Garcia in his interesting book, The M,oral Society: A

Rational Alternative to Death, gives the following as the minimum

requirementsthat should be the objective of a bachelor'sdegree, if in-

telligent citizenshipis to be achieved in an age of science and technologylike our own: Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Engineering,

Psychology,Anthropology,GeneralBehavioralScience, General Science,

General Humanities, Philosophy.28Such knowledge constitutes whatGarcia calls the "BasicProgram" the minimum knowledgeone should

have beforebeginningto specialize.

However, Garcia does not mean by these subject-matterfields exactlywhat they mean to the ordinary college undergraduate. They involve

very much more than this. As defined by Garcia they consist of the fol-

lowing content:

MATHEMATICS: Algebra, real and complex analysis, partial differential equa-tions, probability, statistics, calculus of variations, functional analysis, differ-ential geometry; PHYSICS:Mechanics, electricity and magnetism, optics,mathematical physics, atomic, nuclear, solid state and moder physics;CHEMISTRY:hysical chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, thermo-

dynamics; BIOLOGY:oology, botany, comparative anatomy and physiology,genetics, embryology, neurophysiology, molecular biology; ENGINEERING:

Architecture,structures,mechanical systems, electronic circuits, systemstheory,computer design, communications technology; PSYCHOLOGY:Psychophysics,

physiological sychology,mathematical sychology,earning, ersonality evel-opment; ANTHROPOLOGY:uman evolution and genetics, comparative cultural

development, archeology; GENERALBEHAVIORALCIENCE:History, sociology,

economics, political science; GENERALCIENCE:Geology, paleontology, astron-

omy, ecology; GENERALHUMANITIES:Expository prose, languages, literature,

music, art; and PHILOSOPHY:History of philosophy, metaphysics, logic,

epistemology, ethics.

I will not assert that mass education can afford the educational ex-

pectationsof a

demanding figurelike

JohnGarcia. But I do assert that

those pop intellectuals who wish to produce a rational and humane so-

ciety must move ideally in such directions, even if mass education does

not. However, ignorance in almost every one of the fields of Garcia's

8John David Garcia, The Moral Society: A Rational Alternative to Death(New York:Julian Press, 1971), pp. 218-19.




228 HENRYWINTHROP

Basic Programis characteristic of far too many of the pop intellectuals

of our time.The pop intellectual is blind to the overwhelming importance of

higher education, pursued unsuperficially, f we are to understand in a

general way the totality of our human culture and, even more impor-tant, if we are to be effective in reconstructing he culture of capitalism.He will find his ignorance even more telling in the immediate future

when the West, under pressure to innovate adaptation to the noveltyof our social circumstances,moves away from a politics of personalitiesin the direction of a politics of issues.But if the anti-intellectualismof

our pop intellectuals seems appalling, their ideas concerning the appro-

priate techniques for liquidating the culture of capitalism which, to

them, is identified only with its debits (they customarily do not singpraises on behalf of its credits), are even more reprehensible.Many,and perhaps most, of our pop intellectuals are ideologically oriented,if they have any orientation at all. Not really being problem-oriented,in both the technical and humanitarian senses of this term, they suc-

cumb easily to doctrinaire outlooks when discussing the condition of

man. The importance of being familiar with the raw social and finan-cial data, the legislation and the existing and required social policiesconcerning our grave social problems,and the cogency of critically ex-

amining and changing the values that lie behind our welfare arrange-ments,are alien considerations o them.

Pop intellectuals are undisciplined with respect either to the mathe-matical complexitiesof economic theoryor with respectto the statistical

modes of analysisof social processes,without both of which only limited

understandingof the functioningof Western economiescan be achieved.

They prefer ill-digestedeconomic and social slogans to a genuine under-

standing of the complexities of economic management, production and

planning, particularlyon a large scale. They are singularlyinnocent of

any knowledgeof the "new economics"so much of which is now relatedto economic policy-makingand which, as Heller29has shown, now pro-vides both the theoreticaland empiricalbases for the economic positionsand opportunitiesof all Americans.

Mostpop

intellectualsalso seem to beblithely

unaware of those social

groups and critics that are no longer allowing the economic achieve-

ments of the culture of capitalism to go unquestioned. These are the

29 Walter W. Heller, New Dimensions of Political Economy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1968). Heller served as Chairman of the Council of EconomicAdvisors under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.





groups and individuals who insist that that culture be judged not only

by the volume of goods and services that it turns out but also by the"qualityof life" that it promotes.That quality of life can be measured

and the devicesby which this can be done are called "social indicators."

Accounts of the nature of such indicators will be found in Bauer,30Gross31and HEW.32 It is presumptuous,I think, for pop intellectuals

to deliver overall judgments on the culture of capitalism without some

familiaritywith the story that is told by such indicators.

Finally, pop intellectualshave not sufficientlyrealized the importanceof the new field of studies of the future. Men have to be prescient in a

socially complex, technological culture and this is not likely to be

achieved without some knowledge of alternative future contingenciessuch as those

developed by futurists.And

since the future now signalsus at an increasinglyrapid rate, the culture of capitalism must be pre-

pared to adapt to unprecedented social change. If it does not, we will

be victims of the "future shock" so cogently describedby Toffler.33Here

again, the pop intellectuals of our time seem to be indifferent to the

bearing which studies of the future have on many of their professedconcerns.

The hearts and spirits of our pop intellectuals may be in the right

place. It is their minds which are not. Until our pop intellectuals can

learn to reconnectwith the Westernintellectual legacy and exhibit some

of the modesty that greater moralists than themselves have exhibited

towardsOriginal

Sin in its socialforms,

theirpassion

toright

thewrongsof this world will be aborted. Their obscurantistand doctrinaire notions

will wind up as airy nothings without a local habitation and a name.

Social progress,moral development and institutional improvementswill

come almost solely from dedicated men with a nonpartisan and disin-

terestedmission. This is as it should be. Social change can be achieved

only by patience, hard work, knowledge and reading, social and eco-

nomic researchin depth, intellectual discipline and analytical sophisti-cation. For the upbeat generation,so anxious to improveor liquidate the

culture of capitalism, it is necessaryto remind its members "It is later

than you think."

30Raymond A. Bauer, ed., Social Indicators (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,1966).

31Bertram M. Gross, Social Intelligence for America's Future: Explorationsin Societal Problems (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1969).

32U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Toward a Social

Report (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970).Alvin Toffler. Future Shock (New York: Random House, 1970).

the pop intellectual as anti-christ

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