I just want to write about a trend that I have noticed on the “online left”, one which is probably common through all of the history of leftism, socialism, communism, anarchism, etc., but which is really striking me recently. I don’t know how long I will write but I need to put this into a space which is different than the one where I usually talk, and maybe having to slow down will help me come to more useful thoughts.
The trend I’ve noticed is anti-intellectualism. I could be specific and say “anti-academia” because that is how it usually manifests, but I believe that it is just garden variety anti-intellectualism.
People are always railing against the comfortable ivory tower of academia, declaring that everyone is talking in purposefully obscure language to prevent outsiders from looking in. Okay, let’s put that to the test. Why don’t any of you get busy making this stuff easy to digest for people? You saying that people “should just write in a more readable way” suggests that this is a simple ask. So why aren’t more basic digests of these ideas out there?
Take it from the other angle. Have you ever tried to explain something that’s complex using only “simple” language? Do you know what you end up doing? You end up making references. Using metaphors, comparisons. And you eventually get to the point. But could you then take that exact same explanation and give it to someone else? We all know about how people learn in different ways, at different speeds, better in different contexts, etc. You know that you can’t take one explanation tailored for one person and just export it to other people.
Do you now sort of understand why people might use more specific language, language that might not be easy for everyone to just grasp because it’s specific to a context? And that for people in that context, the specific language will help them to connect to ideas more efficiently than they would get them if they had to wade through different idioms each time?
Further, what do you think academics are? Do you think that everyone has fully figured out every facet of their theory before they publish something? No. A lot of time, you’ve worked out something that hangs together, but that doesn’t mean you’ve totally mastered the concept. That’s why people’s thinking evolves over time, and people may write new works that build on or even totally discard earlier work. To ask everyone who publishes to be able to write in a way which responds to a general reader is basically saying that no one should publish any work until they’ve fully digested it themselves.
Which brings me to another point: why do you assume that the work being produced is finished? That is to say, you can go through academic journals and such to find what they’re writing about, you can look past their paywalls, but why do you assume that what you’re reading is a complete theory? If you’re reading somebody’s somewhat preliminary work, or research work, published for the benefit of other people who understand that, why would you assume that you’re reading something that the author intends a general audience to see? It’s like someone sneaking into Tolkien’s house before he’s published The Hobbit and stealing a page of elvish writing, then publishing the page like “This Tolkien guy doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing”. Completely absurd.
There’s some much about this on a factual level that bothers me. But here is the main thing: what have you done?
I’m not making a grandstanding post here. I am genuinely asking.
Because most people who I see actually making this point – going through the effort of typing it out themselves, producing material based on it, etc. – produce no knowledge work of any kind. They don’t produce effective satire on other topics. They don’t educate anyone. They just have shit to say about academia.
If you are saying that “there are all these great other thinkers out there”, prove it. If you point at Jacobin, I’m going to laugh at you. If you point at Defector, I’m going to laugh at you. They are fine journalists and commentators but they have no solutions because they are not thinkers, they are in the news cycle. You’re going to say that I’m insulting them by saying they’re not thinkers, but that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that they are not academics.
People who write for these websites are not going to think of new ideas to our problems in times when we desperately need them. Have they done that? Where are the new ideas? Because I don’t hear about them. I hear about “incisive commentary”. I don’t hear about theories or plans. Do you know where you have to go for that? Academics.
I have a whole website that’s chock full of theory. I went to college but I’m not in the academy now. But as far as I know, I’m the only one doing it. I’m not saying it’s the greatest stuff ever, but it’s what I think, and how I’ve thought through various issues.
Do you know how many people I’ve asked to see their stuff, times I’ve tried to link up with people, tried to build some kind of non-academia knowledge undertaking? People aren’t interested. And then you have the gall to turn around and act as if people in academia are gatekeeping knowledge from you.
If you want to know something, find out. Learn the jargon or whatever words you have to learn. That’s how you do it. If you have people out there who are doing real work, let’s see them. I would love to see new ideas from people who aren’t just glued to the news cycle and churning out takes.
If you think that this work of making ideas palatable is so important, YOU do it. I’m not trying to say that the original author themselves is without responsibility, but we’re on the internet. We can remix these ideas and work with them and investigate them and do whatever we want. You don’t have to wait for the scary ivory tower wizard to allow you to do this shit.
When I see people complaining about academia, I don’t see good complaints. I see people frustrated that academia has not helped them enough.
Grow up. You have to grow up.
The institution of academia might be bad, I accept that. We’ve all seen major American universities basically give up on both their workers and their society. But when people make this criticism they are not criticizing the institutions, even though they will pretend as though they are. They are directly criticizing the knowledge being produced. What people are doing is basically saying “the way knowledge work is done now is wrong but also I’m not going to do anything to contribute or change it”.
We can change it. We can put all of our own work out there if we want to. But I’ve been online a long time and the number of times I’ve seen anyone other than myself share theory work is roughly zero. If there is this great network of non-academia thinkers out there, I would love to fucking see them but they seem to only exist when people need to shit on papers they found on JSTOR.
You have to grow up.
I’m going to end it with a series of tweets I did on BlueSky about education, because this sort of encapsulates why I feel so strongly about this.
Education must become sacred. Not intelligence. Education. We should find some basic standard of education and forge it into the foundation of our society.
Being uneducated must at some point come to be seen as being defenseless, and being purposefully uneducated is to be purposefully defenseless. It has to be a flaw. This comes with the regrettable demonization of the uneducated but the alternative is allowing people to be vulnerable.
And when I say it “comes with the regrettable demonization”, I don’t mean that we would mandate demonizing those who aren’t educated, the opposite would be the right thing to do. But no matter how you do it, if you set an ideal, those who fall short will feel it. It’s unavoidable.
But *you* have to be educated. There is no way around it. We cannot create a world where “the government” protects you on its own. We have to be able to participate in the world, and we have to be educated to each be able to hold others to account.
It doesn’t matter what sort of governing regime we try to set up if we still predicate it on the idea that most people are going to be uneducated. Mass public education for all has to be one of the very core tenets of a transformative politics.