Some years ago I worked with a fellow who came from a reasonably privileged background, had enjoyed a fashionably elite education, and who was clearly on – and viewed himself fully entitled to be on – the fast track to dizzying heights in his career. For all that, he wasn’t a particularly unpleasant guy – just unabashedly self-aggrandizing. And he plainly thought that everyone was that way – or, at least, everyone who mattered.
Sometimes, we all make this error . . .
We saw, Friday, how self-styled intellectuals maintain a prickly sensitivity to who may, or may not, be esteemed as worthy of their “rank” in society. This would be harmless enough – but for their not-so-hidden ambitions and agenda. Intellectuals feel inherently entitled to rule – and to a privilege that extends to them freedom from the constraints they would (for the latter’s good, of course) impose on others. Consider our traveling intellectual’s chilling revelation of these during a discussion . . .
The overseas visitor travels about the United States, recording his impressions, examining them to divine the very meaning of the country, to psychoanalyze its current condition. But like many psychoanalysts, he reserves to himself – not to his subjects – the right to determine what constitutes psychological health. For you see, as he does not hesitate to make abundantly and repeatedly clear, he is an intellectual . . .
There is a rising debate about the role of intellectuals in modern society. Some decry the attack against intellectualism as arising in populism. It’s an odd idea, which presumes that intellectuals are solely possessed of rational enlightenment, and that the rest of us are merely the ignorant, drooling mob vulnerable to manipulation by any passing unenlightened, anti-intellectual demagogue. But the truth is that populism isn’t a state of intellectual development . . .
The intellectual – especially in Europe -is a modern-day pretender to the throne. Or, at least, to the elevated role of the noble – particularly after the Enlightenment – as the secular interpreter, guide, and even director of the affairs of the benighted masses. But as we have come to know, the royals were not exceptionally intelligent. . .
The arrival of a new President in the United States has led to a frenzy of discussion about superlative individual leadership. This includes the usual topics, although charisma seems to be the most popular. But perhaps most interesting is the element of all of this that may be viewed as coming under the heading of “followership.”
One of the major US networks has revamped its Sunday news program. As a guest on his predecessor’s last show, the new host explained the format. He used an analogy that we likely will be hearing more of in coming months and, perhaps, years. He said that Washington, D.C. usually teaches the country. . .
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