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Nygaard Notes often talks about the role of what I sometimes call "social forces" in shaping our lives. Social forces include things like the current political climate, the dominant ideology of a society, or the prevailing wisdom (which sometimes is not very wise at all). I use everyday examples, often drawn from the daily news, to help illustrate how and why our world is the way it is.
All of us are constantly absorbing messages about the state of the world, from all kinds of sources. If you think about it, I suspect you'll realize that most of the information we receive about the world skips the step of talking about the social forces that are shaping the news. In the daily news cycle—including in social media—it can seem like things "just happen," or that they happen because some strong individual or group made them happen. That's a powerful message, and I think it is a very dangerous and misleading one. But that message is not the result of any conspiracy to deceive us. Rather, it's a predictable message that grows out of the way our information systems are constructed.
Most of the information we get in the course of a day, week, month, or year is presented to us with the assumption that we will make certain kinds of meaning out of it. And not other kinds of meaning. Again, not through anyone's conscious intention—for the most part—but just because certain ideas are so widely shared that they are rarely noticed, let alone debated. That makes them very powerful, indeed.
This idea—that some very powerful ideas get into our heads without being stated—is the first point I'm trying to make in my current series, Ten Concrete Tips for Media Propaganda Self-Defense. In fact, the very first Tip is "Never Use the News Media to Introduce Yourself to a Subject." The point is that any story we come across can only be properly understood if we have some working knowledge of the history which preceded it, the relationships between the people and institutions involved, the economics and culture of the community or nation in which it occurred, and so forth. That's what I mean by "context." Daily newspapers usually lack context, so they are really the worst places to educate ourselves about an issue. That's why we will almost always be better off getting our background on an issue from something other than a daily news publication.
The people who work to provide such background and context are what I call "Public Intellectuals." What is a "Public Intellectual?" Well, they come in all shapes and sizes, and arise from different places, but they all have a similar social function. They are the people who have the time and inclination to do the thinking and communicating necessary to help the rest of us sort out and try to make sense of the flood of information to which we are subjected every day of our lives.
Public and Private Intellectuals
U.S. culture has lots of "non-public" intellectuals. Corporations employ untold numbers of people to think about how to make more money for their companies. Maybe we could call these people "private intellectuals." Schools and colleges have lots of scholars on their payrolls. They sit around reading, thinking, doing research, and talking. If they talk only to students or other professionals in their fields, then they are simply scholars and teachers. That's important, but it doesn't make them Public Intellectuals. Maybe they are sort of "Semi-Public" Intellectuals.
What distinguishes a Public Intellectual from any other person who spends a good deal of their time thinking and talking is that a Public Intellectual consciously attempts to make herself useful to the public at large. You will find a Public Intellectual out in the world—speaking, writing books and articles, attending political meetings and conferences, and in many ways attempting to make her or his knowledge and skills available to people who are doing the hard work of organizing people to change the world.
Public Intellectuals are generalists, big picture thinkers, context-providers. While they may have a specific area of expertise, they must also have the broad general knowledge necessary to understand the social importance of the details they know. Perhaps the biggest thing that Public Intellectuals have that distinguishes them from the general population—and enables them to do what they do—is that their lives are arranged to allow them TIME. Time to think, time to consider the Big Picture, time to reflect on the context for all of the information that shapes our understanding of "how the world works."
Does U.S. culture support Public Intellectuals? Yes and no. Some scholars make their living by teaching, and do their social intellectual work "on the side." Some people are employed by "think tanks," which raise funds and use the funds to actually pay people to be Public Intellectuals. A lot of the people you see on the TV political talk shows or read in the editorial pages fall into this category. Naturally, many of these people tend to use their abilities to defend the system we have, since the "winners" in this system—that is, the wealthy and powerful—are more likely to support intellectuals who will defend this system than those who are more critical. They'd be sort of crazy not to do so.
What All This Has to Do With Nygaard Notes
While anyone can be a Public Intellectual, only some of us have the desire and the inclination to spend a lot of time using our brains in this way. Thinking is real work—it isn't magic—and it takes time to do it. And it takes even more time to communicate it to the public at large. I love doing it, and I think I'm good at helping people do their own thinking, which is why I produce Nygaard Notes. Not only do I consider myself a Public Intellectual; I think of myself as a Working Class Public Intellectual. By that I mean that I write from the point of view of those of us whose only hope for a better life comes from hard work and solidarity. People of wealth and power can pretty much take care of themselves, as individuals, by deploying their resources in certain ways. That's what power means, in part. On the other hand, while some working class and poor people may "make it" to that level someday through good luck or entrepreneurial skill, most of us won't. To improve our lot we will have to rely on united action, social solidarity, and love.
Some Public Intellectuals can also kind of "make it" as individuals, since they are so well-known that they get paid a lot of money to speak, or they can sell enough of their own books that it allows them to live. But they didn't start out able to do it on their own. Somebody had to support them. In my own case, I rely on the readers of Nygaard Notes to read, talk, forward, recommend, and financially support the project. So far, I've received enough support to keep putting out the newsletter you've come to expect. I've been doing it for seventeen years now!
Will I continue to do this, for at least another year? Well, that's up to you. If you appreciate my work as a Working Class Public Intellectual, and understand the importance of this kind of work, then perhaps you will make a contribution in support of the project. If you do, it will be greatly appreciated! If not, keep reading, and keep questioning the dominant ideology.
If you have a really long memory, this essay may seem familiar to you. That's because big parts of it appeared in an early article in an earlier Pledge Drive. In 2005, to be precise. If you remember that, I salute you. |
