Rochester Institute of Technology, via Wikimedia Commons
1980, scientist and author Isaac Asimov argued in an essay “There is, and always has been, a cult of ignorance in America.” That year, the Republican Party stood at the dawn of war. reagan revolutionsparking a decades-long conservative upsurge. Political strategist Steve Schmidt ( I regret choosing Sarah Palin as John McCain’s vice presidential candidate in 2008) pointed out once The main cause was what he called “intellectual corruption” and a cult-like devotion to irrationality among certain sections of the electorate.
It’s a familiar controversy. Criticism of American anti-intellectualism has existed since the country’s founding, whether or not the phenomenon has become stronger. Suspect Susan Jacoby in America’s Age of Irrationalismmay be a subject of discussion. Not all irrationality is partisan, as the failure of political news sources and social media to challenge human- and AI-generated misinformation has shown in recent years. But, Asimov writes, “anti-intellectual tensions, nourished by the mistaken notion that democracy means ‘my ignorance is as good as your knowledge,’ have been a constant entanglement in our political and cultural life.”
Asimov’s main example happens to come from the world of politics. But he doesn’t name any modern day names, reaching out to attack Eisenhower (“he completely invented his own version of the English language”), george wallace. Of particular interest is Asimov’s view of the obscurantists’ slogan: ‘Don’t trust the experts!’ Asimov wryly notes that this word, along with the accusation of “elitism,” is very often used by people who are themselves experts or elites and “feel guilty for going to school.” Many of the wounds of America’s political class are self-inflicted, he suggests, because they are largely the fault of an ignorant electorate.
Indeed, the average American can sign his name more or less legibly and can hear sports headlines. But how many non-elitist Americans can comfortably read 1,000 consecutive words in small print, including three-syllable words?
Asimov’s example is not convincing. That road signs are being “steadily replaced by small pictures to make them internationally legible” has more to do with linguistic diversity than with illiteracy, and accusing television commercials of making their messages aloud without using printed text on the screen seems to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the medium. In his book-length study of the subject, Jacoby focuses on U.S. education policy and resistance to national standards that ensure mass ignorance spread virtually across the country. asimov’s very short and essential essay does not have the luxury or desire to conduct such an analysis.
Instead he is concerned with attitude. He writes that not only the low levels of education of many Americans, but also the nation’s widespread ignorance of “science…mathematics…economics…foreign languages…” has as much to do with Americans’ unwillingness to read as with their incompetence.
There are 200 million Americans who have lived in a school at some point in their lives and admit to knowing how to read…but most decent periodicals believe they’re doing amazingly well with a circulation of 500,000 copies. Maybe only 1 percent of Americans, or even less, are exercising their right to know. And if they try to do anything based on it, they are very likely to be accused of being elitists.
In a sense, one might accuse Asimov of being elitist himself when he concludes that: all Become part of the intellectual elite. ” Such flippantly optimistic statements ignore the ways in which economic elites actively manipulate education policy to suit their own interests, paralyze education funding, and oppose free and low-cost higher education initiatives. Many efforts to spread knowledge Chautauqua Educational radio programming in the early 20th century, educational radio programming in the ’40s and ’50s, and the public television revolution in the ’70s and ’80s were ad hoc and almost always endangered by funding crises and profiteer schemes.
Nevertheless, it is widespread (although hardly universal) The availability of free resources on the Internet has made self-study a reality for many people, and certainly for most Americans. But perhaps not even Isaac Asimov could have foreseen the intense polarization and disinformation campaigns that technology has enabled. Needless to say,”cult of ignorance” was not one of Asimov’s most popular works. newsweekthis short essay has not been reprinted in any of Asimov’s collections.
Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in 2016.
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josh jones I’m a writer and musician based in Durham, North Carolina.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
