Joe Carter weighs in at First Things with a set of challenging reservations about the relevance of Matt Crawford’s arguments for a more general audience. He rightly notes that it’s an argument made by an egghead largely read by eggheads. It’s well worth reading and considering alongside the postings here on FPR this week. (Personal aside: I was a bit irked by Joe’s parenthetical exclamation point after he notes that FPR is devoting a week of postings to a discussion of the book. This either means that he thinks the book can’t bear this level of sustained scrutiny – which is a conclusion one might make, though I’d think only after the week is done; or, that an online outfit like this is a bit out of its mind to do so. I am very glad that we’re able to do this, particularly in contrast to the brief attention span and often superficial flitting that characterizes so much of this medium. It doesn’t have to be this way, and I’m happy that we can swim a bit against that current).
Also well worth reading is a response to Joe’s post by our own Caleb Stegall:
Joe, I have a great deal of sympathy with what you say here, as should be clear to anyone who is familiar with my participation in various of these discussions (i.e., at Crunchy Con on NRO, at FPR, etc.).
I do live in that “small rural town” (pop. 900) but didn’t move here from Manhattan, it’s my home that I just never left. I live and move in and among these “manual laborors” (what an awful phrase) quite easily, and also live and move between them and that “other” world of intellectual (and wealth and power) pursuits.
Which raises several interesting points in my mind. First, the reification of the “intellectual” is mostly a self-fashioning game of “patting each other on the back” (as Lawler is fond of saying) which is a smarmy cover for the real goods being pursued which are wealth, influence, and power. Please let’s not pretend that outfits like First Things and Front Porch Republic are doing anything other than jockeying for position in the world of opinion mongering, status seeking, and influence peddling. The real contemplative life is being romanticized every bit as much and as often as is the “agrarian” life.
Second, you are right that my folks don’t “talk like that.” They would mostly just say that you guys (or us guys as the case may be) are pampered, air-conditioned nancy-boys and panty-waists who wouldn’t last an hour in the “real world.” By this they mean that “intellectuals” lack the most basic and necessary skills of care for themselves, their world, and their people. For the most part, this judgment is correct. And it is wrong to suggest that this anti-intellectualism comes from jealosy or resentment. By and large, it doesn’t. It comes from a certain kind of contempt and disgust for people who are less than free because they are so dependent on others.
That, to me, is where all this discussion should properly head (and to be fair, I haven’t read Crawford’s book, though I did read the original essay). There is a virtuous anti-intellectualism, and it would be healthy to explore its true motives, sources, and advantages, and to discover, as I suspect Crawford has, that such anti-intellectualism is in fact a better foundation and growth bed for the flourishing of the true contemplative, the true ground of existence for a human intellect.
I object to to his parenthetical exclamation point after he notes that FPR is devoting a week of postings to a discussion of the book. This either means that he thinks the book can’t bear this level of sustained scrutiny . . . or, that an online outfit like this is a bit out of its mind to do so.
My excessive use of parenthetical exclamation points in that post was due to the late/very early hour it was written so it doesn’t really come off right. I meant for it to show excitement about the symposium (though it is a bit nuts).
I do think that Crawford raises a number of issues that are worthy of deep reflection and their is no better place for that than here on FPR. Indeed, I love the idea of sustained engagement by a number of thoughtful contributors. Too often on group blogs if someone gets to a subject first, the others feel that they have to move on to other topics. This is exactly the sort of thing that group blogging is made for.
I’m looking forward to reading the rest of this week’s entries. I may be a reconstructed redneck but I still enjoy the highbrow discussions here. I can understand them about 76% of the time, which is a much higher rate of comprehension than when I read Postmodern Conservative.
Joe,
I’m glad to hear/read it. I hope that my post (going online tomorrow) will address some of your objections – though, doubtless, generate a few more… Stay tuned…
Stegall, much as I like your curmudgeonry to an intemperate degree , I would like to offer a little “exploration” of “motives” here:
There is the Down East anti-intellectualism of the “Burt and I” telling the fancy lady in the big city sportscar who ran through the gears past the front porch three times going east to west and west to east before deigning to stop and ask the local rustic “Howduhya get ta East Fasselboro? and the rustic replying “dontchyamoveagaaawwwwddamnedinch”……
And then,
There is the “anti-intellectualism” of the helpless lower to upper middleclass nitwit who believes whatever wild story it is told by the great Oz of the Current Conventional Wisdom while disdaining anything beyond the gloaming of their consumer cornucopia and its many seductions.
I’d be suspicious of any glorification of anti-intellectualism as it is practiced in this day and age even if it is a recognition of the helplessness institutionalized by the so-called thinkers and shakers of this moving garbage barge of recycled modernity. Seems to me there is more of the latter of the two above and that mode of unthinking gone wild is trying to turn a dead end into a through street.
What might be wrong with the phrase “manual laborer”? Seems fairly descriptive to me and having been one for a period, it provided a little incentive to manually work my way into “skilled labor”.
“What might be wrong with the phrase “manual laborer”? Seems fairly descriptive to me and having been one for a period, it provided a little incentive to manually work my way into “skilled labor”.”
Well, now, I’d really like to have a photo of D.W. on the bidness end of a “Mexican dragline.”
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