“Intelligence minus judgment equals intellect. Wisdom is the rarest quality of all—the ability to combine intellect, knowledge, experience, and judgment in a way to produce a coherent understanding. Wisdom is the fulfillment of the ancient admonition,
“With all your getting, get understanding.”
“Wisdom requires self-discipline and an understanding of the realities of the world, including the limitations of one’s own experience and of reason itself. The opposite of high intellect is dullness or slowness, but the opposite of wisdom is foolishness, which is far more dangerous. George Orwell said that some ideas are so foolish that only an intellectual could believe them, for no ordinary man could be such a fool.’’
Sowell clearly belongs this class of ‘intellectuals’.
However, he shines a light in a dark corner of the ‘intellectual’ mind . . .
“The great problem—and the great social danger—with purely internal criteria is that they can easily become sealed off from feedback from the external world of reality and remain circular in their methods of validation. What new idea will seem plausible depends on what one already believes. When the only external validation for the individual is what other individuals believe, everything depends on who those other individuals are. If they are simply people who are like-minded in general, then the consensus of the group about a particular new idea depends on what that group already believes in general—and says nothing about the empirical validity of that idea in the external world.’’
‘Sealed off from feedback’. Fellow ‘believers’ are not the real world.
“The ignorance, prejudices, and groupthink of an educated elite are still ignorance, prejudice, and groupthink—and for those with one percent of the knowledge in a society to be guiding or controlling those with the other 99 percent is as perilous as it is absurd. The difference between special knowledge and mundane knowledge is not simply incidental or semantic. Its social implications are very consequential. For example, it is far easier to concentrate power than to concentrate knowledge. That is why so much social engineering backfires and why so many despots have led their countries into disasters.’’
‘Easier to concentrate power than knowledge’. So true!
“John Stuart Mill, who epitomized the intellectual in many ways, expressed this view explicitly, when he said that the “present wretched education” and “wretched social arrangements” were “the only real hindrance” to attaining general happiness among human beings. Moreover, Mill saw the intelligentsia—“ the most cultivated intellects in the country,” the “thinking minds,” “the best and wisest”—as guides to a better world in their role of “those who have been in advance of society in thought and feeling.”
The scientific/industrial revolution conquered nature. Why not overcome human life the same way. Well . . .
“This has been the role of the intelligentsia, as seen by the intelligentsia, both before and after Mill’s time—that of intellectual leaders whose broader knowledge and deeper insights can liberate people from the needless restrictions of society. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s famous declaration—
“ Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains”
—summarizes the heart of the vision of the anointed, that social contrivances are the root cause of human unhappiness. This vision seeks to explain the fact that the world we see around us differs so greatly from the world that we would like to see. In this vision, oppression, poverty, injustice and war are all products of existing institutions—problems whose solutions require changing those institutions, which in turn requires changing the ideas behind those institutions. In short, the ills of society have been seen as ultimately an intellectual and moral problem, for which intellectuals are especially equipped to provide answers, by virtue of their greater knowledge and insight, as well as their not having vested economic interests to bias them in favor of the existing order and still the voice of conscience.’’
This is a great summary of the ‘vision of the anointed’! What is the correct word — hubris, arrogance, pride? Maybe — supercilious!
PART I -INTRODUCTION Chapter 1 -Intellect and Intellectuals
INTELLIGENCE VERSUS INTELLECT
IDEAS AND ACCOUNTABILITY
COMPETING CONCEPTS OF KNOWLEDGE
THE ROLE OF REASON
PART II -INTELLECTUALS AND ECONOMICS
Chapter 4 -Economic Systems
CHAOS VERSUS COMPETITION
ZERO-SUM ECONOMICS
PART III -INTELLECTUALS AND SOCIAL VISIONS
Chapter 6 -A Conflict of Visions
Chapter 8 -Arguments Without Arguments
“SIMPLISTIC” ARGUMENTS
“SOCIAL JUSTICE”
Chapter 9 -Patterns of the Anointed
“CHANGE” VERSUS THE STATUS QUO
ATTITUDES VERSUS PRINCIPLES
A SEALED BUBBLE
CRUSADES OF THE ANOINTED
PART IV -OPTIONAL REALITY
Chapter 10 -Filtering Reality
OBJECTIVITY VERSUS IMPARTIALITY
Chapter 11 -Subjective Truth
PART V -INTELLECTUALS AND THE LAW
Chapter 12 -Changing the Law
PART VI -INTELLECTUALS AND WAR
PART VIII -AN OVERVIEW
Chapter 20 -Patterns and Visions
Chapter 21 -Incentives and Constraints
THE SUPPLY OF PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS
THE DEMAND FOR PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS
Chapter 22 -The Influence of Intellectuals
Sowell leads reader up a smooth, safe path. However, he clearly marks the dangerous sections. Solid reasoning, abundance of facts and enlightening explanations.
Fit for both general and academic reader. Provides outstanding insight to the causes, puzzles of modernity. Even more, does not offer any real alternative.
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A fine read
No doubt Thomas Sowell Is one of the best economist that ever lived and arguably one of the very top economist still alive. This work on intellectual and Society was masterfully written, and presented in a way that the average lay-reader can understand.The book starts out by explaining Who is an intellectual. To which Thomas defined as the individual who makes a living by creating, aggregating, or curating ideas and presenting those ideas to society or specific groups. Thomas also highlighted the fact that non-intellectuals do have an intellectual component to them such as individuals who use their idea creation to do actual work or produce goods or services for society, he excludes these form of intellectuals from his definition.Thomas then break down a couple of areas were intellectuals have had tremendous influence across the globe. Namely, wars, laws, politics, etc. He then shows how these thoughts from these intellectuals have shaped Society over the century.My favorite phrase in this book is “intellectual virtuosity”. He presented this phrase after explaining the “tragic vision” of the more utilitarian or practical person to the vision of the “anointed vision” of the intellectuals. The biggest take away for me from this book is that intellectuals generally do not have “skin in the game” (al la Naseem Taleb). They face no consequence if their ideology turns out to be ruined us for societies, For example, Karl Marx or Lord Keynes. In fact when intellectuals fail society they just move onto the next ideology, or are exonerated by their followers who can torch themselves to prove that there was a win even within the rubble in the aftermath of the disaster created by their ideology.In my final analysis, this book is a great read. And like so much of Thomas’s work that debunk much of the fallacies and things we hold to be truths in society that are not so.
Top reviews from other countries
Flavio Leite Rodrigues
Intelectuais e sociedade
Reviewed in Brazil on November 8, 2018
A. Crabtree
Some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 18, 2019
