Eliminativism
And another thing. That disdainful remark that ‘The word chatter might strike fear into the heart of traditionalists’ is worthy of Sarah Palin. It strikes fear into our hearts because we think libraries should be places where we can read and think and study. We think that is what they are for, and that that ability is and always has been a good thing. We don’t think removing it is doing anyone a favour. We think there should be places where people can play and make noise and places where they can be quiet and think. We don’t think all places should be like libraries, we just think libraries should be like libraries. Why do people like Burnham think all places should be anti-libraries? Why can’t we have more than one kind of thing? Why can’t we have noise and clatter in these places and quiet in those? Why do we have to eliminate quiet and thought and study?
It’s new, y’see, and new must be better because it’s new. So give every kid a laptop rather than teaching him or her to read, because it’s new, innit, and being new is being progressive, and it’s new.
The library I go to has computers for internet access in a basement and the rest of the floors have shelves of books, and when you speak it’s in a subdued voice, you can sit in a chair and read in peace, and there are nice librarians who help you find books. Sorry to make you cry with envy, OB.
I quote Bill Bryson “you’re taking my world away from me piece by piece and it’s pissing me off.”
Excuse my ignorance, but what exactly has Sarah Palin to do with this?
I may be wrong, knowing little of Sarah Palin’s views on public libraries in Britain, but it seems that ‘I disapprove of this policy’ and ‘I disapprove of Sarah Palin’ is somehow meant to prove that ‘Sarah Palin approves of this policy and is therefore ignorant and stupid’. Or alternatively that ‘I can get in a little snarky comment about someone who all bien pensant people know is an ignorant Republican hick to demonstrate my intellectual superiority’.
Tsk tsk.
You can do better than that.
Why thank you, Brian – nice job of giving me the benefit of the doubt and thinking I might possibly mean something other than either of your suggestions.
“Excuse my ignorance, but what exactly has Sarah Palin to do with this?”
Probably because she’s somewhere around minute 12 of her fifteen minutes of fame as a word salad tosser.
Now that I have more time –
Palin has nothing to do with this. So? I often use extraneous people, events, thoughts, figures of speech, and the like, by way of commentary, humour, metaphor, invective – I do it for all sorts of reasons. So what? There is no rule that says I have to pick one subject and talk about nothing else while I comment on that subject. I mentioned Palin in passing; I mention lots of things in passing; I don’t consider that a problem or a mistake. In other words ‘I can get in a little snarky comment’ any place I damn well want to. And as for doing it ‘to demonstrate my intellectual superiority’ – well that too is a comment worthy of Palin. What do you want me to do? Write as boringly and clumsily and stupidly as I can so that I won’t run any risk of seeming to be trying to ‘demonstrate my intellectual superiority’?
I hate that kind of remark. I really hate it. I hate it from Hillary Clinton, I hate it from Sarah Palin, I hate it from the ‘Minister for Culture,’ I hate it from readers. It’s so…
I don’t know a word for it, but it’s like telling girls not to be too smart or boys won’t like them. I’m not going to pretend to be any dumber than I already am just so that people won’t think I’m trying to ‘demonstrate my intellectual superiority.’
In fact however I wasn’t doing that, or at least no more than I do by running this site at all. I mean – this is why that’s such a stupid thing to say. Everything can be called an attempt to demonstrate one’s intellectual superiority. Universities are full of people doing that; so are laboratories; so are governments; so are hospitals. So what? Do we want everyone to pretend to be stupid? Do we want to get rid of all the universities and labs and governments? I run this site, I write comments here, I can’t do it without the obvious risk of exhibitionism – but I want to go on doing it anyway. Okay?
As I was saying: I wasn’t doing that, I was taking a shot at Palin’s ‘populist’ anti-intellectualism, because I dislike that kind of thing, and also because I loathe the way Palin and McCain have been campaigning. It’s got nothing to with what’s bien pensant and what isn’t, it’s got to do with political lying.
Also, Palin has a history with libraries and librarians. More directly, I mentioned her because the tone of the sneer about traditionalists reminded me of the tone of some of Palin’s sneers – at Obama’s organizing, for instance.
And finally: no I can’t do better than that, that is the best I can do.
I still don’t understand why it seems more common for people to be anti-intellectual as opposed to say, anti-beauty or anti-sporting-ability. Why don’t people mind if someone is better looking than them, or can run faster or play ball better than them, but doesn’t want anyone to be smarter than them? In fact, it seems as though people positively ADORE people who are better looking or better sportspeople, yet resent more intelligent people. What’s so threatening about intelligence?
The only thing that got me through high school was the thought that one day it would be over. It seems like that day will never come.
Rose, I don’t think ‘people’ are anti-intelligence at all. Rather, it is squabbling over relative status in my opinion. In context, most are not anti-intellectual – eg in praising a hometown composer or author, or meeting a professor when you are both helping out at your kids’ school. We defer to expertise and mostly respect accomplishment.
Where the anti-intellectualism comes in is when the status ranking indicators are transgressed – eg, being poet laureate does not exempt one from rules against paedophilia, so if you make ‘transgressive’ art that can be interpreted that way you invite a shitstorm of criticism. My moral superiority trumps your intellectual superiority, so our relative status has to be settled with a lot of chattering, chest-beating and screaming at each other.
Then it settles down.
Labour used to be for the poor. I have known gifted young people who don’t have a good situation rely on libraries. They are places they can go to study, read and generally try and improve themselves. Trust our government to patronise, dumb-down and unwittingly hurt the very people they’re trying to help!
…perhaps they see that a library looks a bit like an open plan office and get confused. After all the open plan idea boosted productivity so maybe – oh, wait.
This is a library,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/content/image_galleries/lit_and_phil_gallery.shtml?1
Why fix it if it ain’t broken? I love this place, it’s a civilised oasis in the centre of the city. Step away from the noise and sink into a big leather armchair. Nice people bring you tea and bikkies (in mis-matched crockery) while you read. And they remember whether or not you take sugar.
For me this has always been the Platonic ideal of a library.
By all means have an area where you can push the ‘books can be fun’ message: but accept that for most of us, we aren’t there to boogie.
Rose: I agree with you. There is a real hostility towards intelligent people: they’re mocked as nerds, as book-worms, as egg-heads, and in Spanish there is the same variety of terms mocking them, many of them quite hostile. On the other hand, I can’t think of any terms mocking people who are very good-looking. I would hazard a guess that what normal people fear and hate in very intelligent people is their critical ability, their tendency to question received opinion and thus, to destroy the myths that normal people live by. Intelligence is seen as a threat to comfortable conformity, and most people cling to their comfortable conformity. However, that theory is just a guess.
Rose: One more guess on why the non-intelligent are so hostile to the intelligent. It is impossible for a non-intelligent mind to understand an intelligent one. A non-intelligent person cannot put him or herself in the position of an intelligent one, while a non-good looking person can easily put him or herself in the position of a good-looking one. On the other hand, it’s fairly easy for an intelligent person to understand how the mind of a non-intellligent person works.