Re: SOC: Intellectual Elites and Paradigm Shifts

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Feb 29 2000 - 13:04:36 MST


GBurch1@aol.com writes:

> This made me think about times when the "intellectual establishment"
> is out of synch with society, which appears to be the case now, as
> the article about "thought reform" in academia illustrates.

A good point, Greg. The hopefully emerging new intellectual groups
seem to be in the "third culture" inhabited more by cross-disciplinary
researchers with a leaning towards the natural sciences (but applying
them or learning from) the more traditional humanities. Transhumanism
of course fits in here too.

> I think we may well be in one of the latter periods.
> Deconstructivist, socialist postmodernist relativism seems to me to
> be the hallmark of the Old Order. Just as the elite of the late
> medieval Catholic establishment engaged in an increasingly
> irrelevant and detailed re-working of hierarchical, authoritarian
> christian theology and social theory, so the "soft social science"
> intellectuals of contemporary academia seem to be mired in a program
> that is less and less in touch with the dynamics and real values of
> the society that supports them.

Exactly. The main problem is that the current intellectual
establishment cannot provide with solutions (not even wrong
solutions), since it is busy being self-referential and questioning
everything except the need for questioning (except for its own memes,
of course - when will somebody deconstruct Derrida?). This will of
course give the advantage to groups who can or claim to provide
solutions.

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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