I guess I missed a lot in February.
BookTV/C-SPAN2 is great. For a lot of reasons. And despite the fact that Susan Jacoby frightens me when she focuses directly on the camera and Rick Gillespie’s hair is strangely and imminently more illustrious than mine.
But, watching the two of them somewhat sloppily debate leads me to desperately try to categorize their platforms and run the risk of oversimplification. Gillespie – Cultural Radical (meaning, the bridge between highbrow and low – kitsch); Jacoby – Old-School Academic. I like both. I like to think I am both. So, the question I pulled was, Do I have to choose one? Can I ever be both, or will one eventually submit to the other? But, I’ve no intention of answering it here.
If Jacoby argues against anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism and sources the proponents of culture (video) as degenerate agents, then obviously she means business in squelching low culture. (She was reverently opposed to Friday the 13th during the interview, and somewhat covertly linked it to school violence, which was smooth, kudos Susan). Or so people have interpreted her argument, and that would explain throwing the Cultural Radical in the ring to battle it out with the Old-School Academic over a wobbly coffee table.
Actually, that may be the lot of her argument. But what she doesn’t fully elucidate is what drives technology’s content, not just the use or the very existence of technology. Specifically, what drives technology to perpetuate entertainment, or what drives America, democracy, capitalism to provide this ameliorating source to our difficult production-based lives.
Technology aside, she attacks the schools. The state of which is explained by their institutional nature, and not entirely unaffected by public policy, leading back to government.
I’m all for old-school academics, obviously, and I don’t eschew historical/international/obscure/classic texts in favor of a purely digital culture? age. Jacoby is peeling back the first layer but she doesn’t dissect as deeply as needs be to resolve the multi-generational degeneration of intellect/rationale.
That’s the problem with blaming the messenger and the receiver; instead, question the message and the sender to reveal why the uneducated masses persist with defiance. And why they are given that defiance – afforded intellectual complacency. Worker class, bourgeoisie, &etc.
The issue is the inability to critically think, conceptualize and analyze beyond initial acceptance of given material, which I do believe Jacoby addresses.
And I’d go on and on about Jimmy Wales’ response to Jacoby’s Washington Post article, but it seems too easy. Summary: he misses the point completely, and that only reifies her point. Anyway, rather old news, but I thought I’d have a go.
Also, is Denmark some kind of untapped utopia? First Mr. Environmental Studies Director references it during our interview, and now Jacoby. I feel stupid, but not anti-rational; there’s hope yet!
