Michael > Recent Status Updates

Hofstadter credits American anti-intellectualism in part to the watering down of religious teachings which resulted in the breakdown of social norms and cohesion. Now, fast forward 100s of years later to social media, which has diminished the power of the expert/authority/teacher/intellectual etc and has in part resulted in the breakdown of norms. History echos in the present but with entirely different catalysts.

Fascinating learning about the revivalist movement (in America) which undercut a more traditional, learned clergy that viewed rational thought as intrinsic to faith. This idea of feeling over thought in religion eventually resulted in today's evangelical Christians and their rejection of intellectual discourse,

"the intellectual life here has taken on a kind of primary moral signifigance. It is this aspect of the intellectual's feeling about ideas that i call his piety. The intellectual is engage - he is pledged, committed, enlisted. What everyone else is willing to admit, namely ideas and abstractions are of signal importance in human life, he imperatively feels"

Learning the etymology of the word egghead and it's connection to the words anti-intellectual and pretentious is an odd sort of pleasure.

Everyone here, to varying degrees, is broken and corrupt. The first person to die (at the Fatale's hand) was maybe the one person who still believed (probably foolishly) in something.

"Baron Jules further informed Aimee that, although the movements of men are not analogous to the movements of the stars, it sometimes seemed to him that they were..."

A town (and society) interested in the production and consumption of things is about to consume itself."

Seven pages through the fatale in question has murdered someone, gorged herself on champaign and rubbed her body with 30k worth of francs. Oh, and she's changed her name and moved to another town.

"But an action which wants to serve man ought to be careful not to forget him along the way; if it chooses to fulfill itself blindly, it will lose its meaning or will take on an unforeseen meaning; for the goal is not fixed once and for all; it is defined all along the road which leads to it."

"But a democracy which defends itself only by acts of oppression equivalent to those of authoritarian regimes, is precisely denying all these values; whaterever the virtues of a civilization may be, it immediately belies them if it buys them by means of injustice and tyranny."

"As we have also seen, the situation in the world is so complex that one can not fight everywhere at the same time an for everyone. In order to win an urgent victory, one has to give up the idea...of serving certain valid causes; one may even be brought to the point of fighting against them."

"He can become conscious of the real requirements of his own freedom, which can will itself only by destining itself to an open future, by seeking to extend itself by means of the freedom of others. Therefore, in any case, the freedom of other men must be respected and they must be helped to free themselves. Such a law imposes limits upon action and at the same time immediately gives it a content."

Yet it is because there are real dangers, real failures, and real earthly damnation that words like victory, wisdom, or joy have meaning. Nothing is decided in advance, and it is because man has something to lose and because he can lose, that he can also win."

"Yet it is because there are real dangers, real failures, and real earthly damnation that words like victory, wisdom, or joy have meaning. Nothing is decided in advance, and it is because man has something to lose and because he can lose, that he can also win."

"There are people who are filled with such horror at the idea of defeat that the keep themselves from doing anything. But no one would dream of this gloomy passivity as the rigumph of freedom."