Author: Nick Huo

This week we mainly talked about Progressivism and their relations with the intellectuals. Progressives believe that men are intrinsically honest and good, though they are also subject to corruption. And they have certain fixations on the Pregressive Utopia, where a world without conflict can be built and all men in it are good or complacent. However, in reality, no such Utopia is possible. One thing we talked about was that intellectuals would always produce ideas that would challenge things. So if intellectuals were to really live in Utopian societies, either the society is not really utopian, or intellectuals would cease to exist.

We also see that Progressivism has logical flaws in their reasoning. On the one hand, they are trying to build societies that are Utopian, that is without any conflicts. On the other hand, to maintain such societies, there have to be some people or some structure in place. I believe that they are believing too much in individual “goodness.” For example, Communism also tries to achieve societies that were perfectly equal and without proper classes or differences among people – everyone would get the same for their work. However, there was still a really powerful party and party officials were clearly getting a lot more in the society compared to regular peasants. There is also the problem regarding human nature. In this case, everyone ought to get the same for their work. But people are also intrinsically lazy, that is they would prefer to not do anything “extra” if they have what they need and what they want. Then, for those who want to get more, the communist system would prevent them from getting what they want by contributing more. The more severe problem is that the lazy ones will drag everyone down. 

We can also find certain links between Progressivism and Gnosticism. Mainly, they are both assuming something unreasonable about things. Progressivists were believing that an Utopia society could be built on Earth; Gnosticists also just had blind faith in their religion. 

Another issue with Progressivism is their focus on the collective rather than the individual. Progressives often prioritize the needs and wants of society as a whole over the needs and wants of individual members of that society. While this may sound noble, in practice it can lead to the suppression of individual rights and freedoms.

For example, in a Progressive Utopia, everyone would be expected to conform to certain societal norms and expectations. Those who did not conform would be seen as deviant or disruptive, and could potentially be punished or ostracized. This kind of pressure to conform can be stifling for individuals, and can prevent them from fully expressing themselves or pursuing their own goals and desires.

Furthermore, the idea of a Progressive Utopia ignores the fact that conflict and disagreement are natural and inevitable parts of human society. No matter how much we may try to create a society without conflict, there will always be differing opinions and competing interests. Attempting to suppress or eliminate these conflicts can lead to repression and authoritarianism, as those in power try to enforce their own vision of what a Utopian society should look like.

In conclusion, while the ideals of Progressivism may be well-intentioned, they are ultimately flawed and unrealistic. The pursuit of a perfect society without conflict ignores the complexities and realities of human nature, and can lead to the suppression of individual rights and freedoms. 

In this week’s discussion, one of the topics was on the potential cause of the “problems” that we saw. We went into a lot of historic backgrounds, and analyzed that potentially, the overproduction of intellectuals is one of the main motives 

Maybe it is because current and past societies were structured in a way that limits social mobility. There are few ways for people to ascend the socio-economic ladder. For example, it is probably easier for a poor family’s child to go to college and then get a good paying job with their degree than to start one’s own business or through some other way to get a good paying job or just magically join the higher class.

The fact that people all want to become intellectuals (go to colleges) even when the results might not be worth it (not high enough payment as expected), might indicate that they had no other easier way to move upward along the social hierarchy. Rereading the chapter assigned for this week, I also noticed that Gouldner commented the same on this fact. Social blockade for upward mobility contributed to the alienation of intellectuals. Moreover, I think there is an interesting process going on. So, because of blocked ascendence, people choose to become intellectuals, hoping to have a better chance for ascendence. Yet, the reality is that they are still being blocked. Being an intellectual may have helped in some ways for ascendence, but if there are then too many intellectuals, there will be the same problem of blocked ascendence. Blocked ascendence not only contributed to the alienation of intellectuals, but it also led to “an increase in the political activity by the New Class and in open acts of confrontation with authority” (Gouldner 63). 

We then talked about how having too many intellectuals could potentially be a huge problem for society, especially when these intellectuals are unhappy. Since these intellectuals are well-educated, it won’t be hard for them to come up with plans to attempt to destroy the current society and have a “new society” that places intellectuals at better positions, like having more social influence or actually being “in charge” of the society. This is in line with what we have learned earlier about the intellectuals, that they are also actively seeking for power.

Another interesting thing I found in the reading is about intellectuals’ reliance on using words or ideas as their weapons. This stems from their tradition of CCD, and also explains why they view censorship as so much of a bad thing. This also creates another incentive for the intellectuals to seek more power, as media and publications were largely, and still are, controlled by the ruling class that has money and political power, instead of intellectuals.

I have some questions about Ersatz Religion: why does God appear so much in this text? I understand that religion played a hugely important role in the history of western societies. But is it possible to analyze the intellectuals and their traditions and thinking by controlling for the possible effects of religions?

First, we talked about the idea of Culture of Critical Discourse (CCD) — using reason and rationality to get people to agree with one’s idea because it is sound, instead of using one’s authority or power to force people into believing. But, it is also weird to me, as I feel that there are some intellectuals, like the example Prof. Riley gave on Sartre, that are not really following the culture of critical discourse. For natural scientists, as claims must be backed with empirical evidence, there is little room for debate if the empirical evidence directly contradicts one’s claim. Prof. Riley then made it clear that people like poets, social activists, or professors can also be classified as intellectuals. Although it is defined that intellectuals are people that practice culture of critical discourse, I feel that in practice, sometimes it is not true. Often times, people are not using reason and rationality.

We then analyzed intellectuals in relation to power. While often perceived only interested in seeking the truth, intellectuals — as a social group — are just like any other social groups; they would seek to gain power and rise in the social hierarchy. I proposed the claim that there are many intellectuals, especially natural scientists, I would say are not trying to gain power. They are not trying to become the more powerful class and rule others. For example, I know many math professors that do research in their field because they simply love the beauty in whatever subject they are researching. Prof. Riley’s response to this was that: although these intellectuals are not trying to overpower other people in the society, they almost all hope to gain power in their own field – like through publishing papers or making groundbreaking discoveries.

In the reading, we also saw that intellectuals believe that they should “run” the society as they know best about things. It sounds sound, but in reality is flawed. Intellectuals are still human beings that could make mistakes just like everyone else. The fact that they actively try to practice the CCD does not mean that they are constantly doing that all the time. They might have different social roles and do different things for those responsibilities. They could also make mistakes at times. So we have a paradox or a dichotomy. Intellectuals claim to, or at least hope to, practice CCD, yet I feel that it is against our human nature. We are not purely rational beings.

Sacredness in the intellectuals. Just like religions, intellectuals have sacred practices and sacred artifacts as well. To them, the pursuit of the truth is their sacred practice; famous intellectuals are seen as sacred figures and have certain reverence and power among the intellectuals or even the general public.

I feel that religion is more like a general structure that could be applied to many other aspects of the social world. Though, typically, religion refers to Christianity, Catholicism, Muslim, and etc, but there are also just so many things in life that people just claim that they “believe it” yet are unable to back it up with any real world evidence.

This week we are starting to learn about intellectuals as a social class. Mainly, we are defining intellectuals as people who “produce decontextualized ideas.” So everyone can produce ideas. In fact, people probably produce their own ideas all the time. But what separates the layman from the intellectuals is that the intellectuals produce ideas that are decontextualized – ideas that are ought to hold true in various contexts. A contextualized idea might be “I am feeling hungry” or “I am tired because of the amount of work I have.” But a decontextualized idea can be “humans feel hungry when they need to eat food and intake energy” or “people often feel more tired and stressed when they have workload that exceeds what they are used to, thus leading to lower productivity,” like what we see in psychology research. So a mathematician can be an intellectual; scientists can be intellectuals. But we should also note that musicians and artists can also be intellectuals, as the work they produce can also be said to be decontextualized. Moreover, we can also categorize people like philosophers or people who seek to influence the society by producing decontextualized ideas as intellectuals.

As intellectuals, knowledge and ideas are like sacred objects to them, similar to religious systems. Prof. Riley also mentioned at class how excited he and his friends were to see Pierre Bourdieu. To them, Bourdieu is like both a sacred object and a saint in their field.

In Collin’s Coalitions in the Mind, we see how the interactions between intellectuals fall under Goffman’s Interaction Rituals, since intellectuals often interact with each other in such a way that they are seriously discussing topics of interest and engaged with each other deeply. Thus, for each “group” of intellectuals, they would also have their own sacred object.    In Gouldner’s The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class, we learned about how the intellectuals started to rise as a new class in the 20th century. First, intellectuals started to become secularized, so they are more involved in the general populations’ lives, instead of what historically had been a church-centered society. Inside this new class, it is split between humanitarian intellectuals and technocrat intelligentsia.