One thing that I found interesting on page 31 of the chapter on “The New Class as a Speech Community” is when it said, “in addition to having friendly, informal, or intimate ties with one another, they are also more likely to reside and vacation in the same neighborhoods and ecological areas, as well as intermarrying frequently with one another”(Gouldner 31).
Here he is talking about intellectuals. This really resonated with me because I remember a discussion we had in class about why intellectuals are not in charge of our country if they are so intelligent. One thing we talked about is maybe one of the reasons is because of their lack of charisma and that personality also matters when we elect people to run our countries because they are the face and representatives of millions of people. Here it says that intellectuals mostly spend time with each other which is why it seems like the reason they are not in these types of positions is because no one who is not considered an intellectual really gets to interact with them because they do not step out of their imagined community. Another quote from the same chapter that supports this is “the deepest structure in the culture and ideology of intellectuals is their pride in their own autonomy, which they understand as based on their own reflection, and their ability to decide their course in the light of this reflection”(Gouldner 33). This suggests that maybe intellectuals do not want to get involved in their nation’s politics which is why they much prefer to exclusively mingle with each other. People looking at this from an outside point of view may deem this as them thinking they are above others but we do not know what their true intentions are. Another thing we talked about in class that I found interesting was the fact that the intellectual class is growing in the western world and if you live in western society you have to trust intellectuals. This is something that I never thought about before I heard it in class and it made me realize how under the radar intellectuals are because you would think that we would know the people who create the things that rely on everyday, however it is safe to say that most people don’t even pay any mind to that. It is crazy to think that most people are putting their lives in the hands of people who they don’t know. I also found it interesting that intellectuals originated from the church. I found it interesting because the ideas that people in the church were studying are very different from the ideas that intellectuals probably study today. Although, it does make sense at the same time because back then when monks and priests were trying to find religious answers, they had to really think deeply and think about things that others did not just like how intellectuals decontextualize ideas. All in all they are practicing the same thing just in different contexts.
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