The state of intelligence and the world

Susan Jacoby and Howard Gardner write two fascinating columns on the state of intelligence and literacy in contemporary culture, in today's Washington Post, which illustrate the conundrums and the opportunities for education in America, liberal democracies, and the contemporary world.

Susan Jacoby - The Dumbing of America

Howard Gardner - The End of Literacy? Don't Stop Reading

Both are smart and interesting reads on the state of intelligence in the world and contemporary democracies. Jacoby is rightly concerned with the perenial question, with its contemporary manifestations, of the celebration of ignorance and anti-intellectualism in contemporary society. Gardiner argues, also correctly, I believe, that most modern technologies signal greater opportunities for reading and thinking rather than fewer and that conventional intelligence - an interesting focus for Gardner, given that the bulk of his work is dedicated to a more diversified view of intelligence; if you have not read Gardner's Frames of Mind about his conception of multiple intelligences (eight that Garner has identified, at this point) I highly recommend it - has a long future in store for it.

Fundamentally, I think this discussion is important as a long-standing, timeless, and enduring discussion of how of the importance of wise and intelligent thought and how to open up that circle as broadly, as usefully, and with as much intellectual honesty and integrity as possible.

I think what we are witnessing with the digital age is an opening up of society to help us see, better, the world, more, as it is, and the opportunities as well as the immediate limits in cultivating a commitment and understanding of the importance of conventional intelligence.

H.L. Mencken recognized the problems with perpetually too few people in the world taking intelligent thought seriously. But his older and distant mentor, Mark Twain recognized the greater importance of including more of those people, as much as possible, in the mix of wisdom and intelligent reflection.

There are always too few people who take serious thought seriously enough. It has been an important fact of human existence since the recognition of this unique capacity for survival and thriving for the human species long before there were universities, newspapers, and an internet to contemplate such facts of existence.

And it is for that reason - and the tendency of the uneducated and educated, alike, to undermine the capacity for intelligent engagement and reflection with their rationalization of our base instincts for aggression to somehow compensate for both our ignorance, our lack of thought, and our insecurities in the face of a world that necessitates such thought by virtue of the problems it offers us to solve - that it has been so important to, unendingly and in as many different directions as possible, expand the opportunities for reason, science, creativity, information-gathering, expermimentation, thoughtful reflection, and the long, long list of various forms of intellectual activity to reach as many people as possible, to inform their lives and to bridge the existences, values, and understandings of those who take thinking more seriously and those who do not.

It's an effort that will never end. But it's an effort that reaps value for each successive generation that engages in its labors. It builds and nurtures our humanity and our capacity for mutual learning, growth, and development in a world where still too many people die, suffer, are repressed, imprisoned and restrained, all in the name of aggression attempting, fruitlessly, to compensate for our ignorance.

And every opportunity for us to recognize the edges of intelligent thought, and the liberal values, ideas, technologies and opportunities that nurture and expand that terrain, are valuable for our individual and general welfare.

As most intelligent people know, intelligence, especially its deepest, wisest, most profound versions and permutations, matters. Enormously. The question that individuals and all of humanity has always faced is how seriously we are going to take serious thought and how seriously are we going to engage all of those around us in that enterprise.

And the truth is that though Jacoby is right that the opportunities for modern peoples to revel in the pride that often accompanies stupidity and ignorance are growing and so many signs about the willingness of individuals in contempoary societies to take intelligent thought seriously look somewhat discouraging, in many areas of culture, the fact, I think, is that the horizon looks very bright for intelligent thought and those who take it seriously, and for those who don't take it seriously, and for the opportunities and likely outcomes of much greater proportions of people taking education, intelligence, creativity and thoughtful reflection seriously, even as people take plenty advantage with modern technology and society to avoid what many regard as boring and labor intensive efforts.

Because the truth, eventually, is hard to escape. Intelligence does matter. Learning facilitates opportunities in life. And occassions to develop thought benefit everyone, especially those not quite sold on its value.

And every chance to expand those circumstances - whether through books, movies, music, the internet, business and financial dealings, discussion, debate, creative outlets of all kinds, and every which way that intelligent thought can be cultivated - ups the likelihood and yield of the harvest of better consequences that intelligent thought sows.

Things are looking good even as fear of an uncertain world endlessly plagues the minds of the more and less thoughtful among humanity. That fear will never leave us completely as long as the risk of failure of our efforts and thought are always with us. But it dissipates the greater faith we put in our capacity to discuss, debate, think through and solve our problems despite and as the only real alternative to that fear and its byproducts.

Things look good for intelligent thought because they have always looked good for intelligent thought. Because it is the only real opportunity for anything to look good for the longer term of our lives.

It is our fear and its correlates that always betray us. All of us. Me too.

Ideas and the thinking that renders them have always been the light that shines our way through the darkness. And it is that light that uniquely advances human civilization in the face of a world that is now and forever beyond our total grasp. No matter how smart or not we are or think we are.