NOVEMBER 28, 2014
Americans have an uncomfortable relationship with smart. They are perfectly happy to celebrate genius, provided it doesn't make them uncomfortable or require too much of them. They are more concerned that their children get into college than they are that those kids are graded against the kind of tough standards that might ensure understanding of important concepts. Once in college, students often really have to screw up to get a D or an F. I taught graduate school for a number of years, and I practically had to alert psychological counselors if I gave anyone anything below a B.
This phenomenon was once described as "the dumbing down of America." And in recent years, the trend has accelerated. One particularly odious element of it is what might be called pop intellectualism. Big, buzzy ideas are boiled down into short books that provide more cocktail-party conversation than significant concepts that require a little work to grasp. Think The Tipping Point and The Black Swan. (For real heavyweights, there's always the biography of Steve Jobs or recent, popular volumes by Thomas Piketty and Henry Kissinger to leave on the coffee table and make an impression. Because let's be clear, more people buy these books as fashionable accessories, not for what's on their pages.)
Worse still is the whole TED talks phenomenon, which offers the intellectual equivalent of diets in which someone can lose 10 pounds in two weeks without giving up ice cream sundaes or pizza. In just 18 minutes, a person can be exposed to breathlessly earnest genius -- a slickly marketed brand of chicken nuggets for the brain. The talks enable non-scientists and non-technologists to feel smart, but that is not the same as actually being smart or, alternatively, feeling dumb in the way that hard ideas sometimes make you feel -- and should -- when you first encounter them.
Perhaps worst among the consequences of the dumbing down of America is the hyper-politicization of discourse. This has led to the rise of media outlets and debates that are tailored to specific audiences who seek out viewpoints that support already-held beliefs. (The notion that beliefs are more important than actual knowledge is a byproduct or perhaps a driver of all this.) So people watching or reading the news tend not to see both sides of any issue -- much less issues that have more than two sides. Litmus tests and the ability to articulate already-popular views are valued more than what is really new or challenging.
Unsurprisingly, this trend's impact on creativity and imagination in Washington -- the epicenter of political polarization and the wellspring from which all litmus tests flow -- has been particularly egregious. In the policy community, people who may wish to do more than tailor ideas to pre-existing, polled audiences have discovered that in doing so they run the risk of offending someone on Capitol Hill who might not vote to confirm them in top jobs were they ever to want them; that is to say, originality is not only frowned upon, but it is actually institutionally quashed. Thus, far too little bold thinking goes on in the country's think tanks.
It is safer to write an article that doesn't offend than it is to write one that actually breaks new ground.
It is safer to write an article that doesn't offend than it is to write one that actually breaks new ground. The result? Journals that are exercises in reputation management. The bland leading the bland.
In researching my book National Insecurity, I looked at 10 of the most prominent think tanks in Washington over a period of a decade. These organizations produced almost 12,000 events, papers, and research reports over that time. Of these, the vast majority concentrated on just a few topics -- such as the Middle East, the war on terror, and China -- linked closely to whatever was in the headlines at the time. Other areas, deserving of focus but outside the "buzz zone," got much less attention. The areas that got by far the least coverage? Science and technology -- never mind that they are responsible for most of the changes redefining life on the planet and many of the emerging threats with which humanity is grappling.
In short, the city most in need of big, new ideas may be home to the most dumbed-down smart people of all. Combine a lack of creative thinking, organized stupidity like the war on science, and political paralysis, and you get today's Washington, sleepwalking into America's future. A symptom of this problem is seen in Foreign Policy's list of the Leading Global Thinkers of 2014. Of the people we selected -- each of whom had to meet our criteria of generating an idea or series of ideas that actually resulted in actions influencing people's lives, whether positively or negatively -- precisely two work in Washington, D.C., and neither of them works in the U.S. government.
Now, I'll admit this is a subjective list. We pick who is on it, and hard choices are involved when looking at well more than 100 possible candidates. But candidly, this year, when it came to Washington, there just weren't that many choices. At the moment, the Beltway is pretty close to brain-dead, especially according to our criteria. That's not to say people in D.C. did not take actions that affected many people; but when they did, those actions did not flow from new thinking or anything remotely like a big idea.
The good news is that there are many thinkers out there who deserve the recognition we hope our list brings -- for challenging convention, stimulating thought, improving lives, disrupting the status quo. They are scientists, engineers, designers, artists, writers, leaders, politicians, and more who show that America is finding ways to flourish without Washington, and that the world is doing likewise. There are bad guys too -- offering up bad ideas and translating them into bad acts -- who show that, without strong leadership and ideas in Washington, the world may find itself at greater risk for tumult and chaos.
Before the anti-government types start saying it was ever thus, let's not dismiss the impact of the birth and growth of American democracy; the push westward fostered by federally sponsored expeditions, such as that of Lewis and Clark; the abolition of slavery; the cultivation of national infrastructure; the space program; the Internet; and a host of other things that, if not exclusively born of Washington, were at least nurtured there. When Washington has been a source of creativity, America and the world have benefited greatly.
The absence of Washingtonians on our Global Thinkers list isn't just a reflection of the fact that we think America's capital has hit a new low or that we worry about how that low is linked to the broader dumbing-down trend limiting America. Rather, we are also casting light on the situation in the hope that it triggers a discussion about how Washington must change. It is high time for America to identify and work to reverse the developments that have led to the quashing of imagination in Washington. This work includes bringing new perspectives to a city that has far too many lawyers and lobbyists and not enough scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs, and other creative thinkers.
The world certainly does not always need Washington to function, even thrive -- the past few years have proved that. But it is clearly better off when the business of Washington is driven by new ideas rather than when, as seems to be the case today, it is stunted by fear of them.
One big problem that what most in the media call "science" is in fact not science at all, but partisan opinion by people that often never published a single peer reviewed paper. One small example: insisting that every use drug industry sponsored definitions of terms like pregnancy, re defining it as starting at implantation, and shutting up anyone that opposes this new, commercially driven, double speak.
I too think this is a well-observed, keen observation by Mr. Rothkopf, but think that he misses the mark in not identifying what is, to me at least, the cause of this phenomenon which is Political Correctness.
How, after all, is one going to be able to articulate some new view on ... damn near *anything* today without being just instantly and savagely attacked for allegedly displaying some deep and ugly moral failure which can only sometimes be atoned for via the most craven apologies imaginable.
Torquemada would be proud.
And the evidence this is the case is manifest in how utterly common it is now to hear people articulating private views that you know—and they will admit—that they would never articulate in public for fear of their jobs or of getting smeared with some near-ineradicable stain.
Or think too of the number of Politically Incorrect "signifiers" out there now such as "racist, homophobe, sexist, anti-semite, nativist, Luddite, denier" and on and on, and every special interest group's patent and wild searching for a similar slur of their own to shut down those who disagree with them.
Of course this technique could never succeed unless it was given traction, and it is here where the blame should be focused on our mass media which near joyfully and at the very least allows same to be used without denouncing it, although more often by allowing it to be employed by its own talking and writing and speaking heads.
And just think of precisely *who* are the people *most* deterred from speaking their ideas and minds when such an atmosphere exists: It can certainly tend to be *the* best of people intellectually speaking, with independent minds, who despise such a fundamentally anti-intellectual, rabble-rousing thing, and who thus find it far easier to just stay away in disgust from getting involved in the public intellectual debate over an issue.
And it is precisely those boorish people who tend to be comfortable themselves slinging slurs and etc. who find that atmosphere conducive, not themselves caring a damn what slurs or criticisms come back at them.
What a system we have allowed to be created. The Rule of the Loudmouthed.
Might this analysis fall prey to the very phenomenon it seeks to expose? Fact is, the way people receive and process knowledge and information has changed rapidly since the intellectual circles of 20th century that Mr. Rothkopf sentimentalizes. Information intake is vast and continuous and thinking has become more collaborative in professional work. In the information age, the playing field of "thought" has been leveled - no longer can one person believe to uniquely have deep or true insight. Many people now have access to insights that used to be protected by the exclusive elite circles of Washington. Most foreign policy 'geniuses' of 1990s network television have been debunked as showmen. Incremental insights that used to be hidden deep within dense and pretentious tomes are now being disseminated in much more time efficient and accessible lectures.
Sorry, Mr. Rothkopf, but the world were only a few were privileged to judge foreign policy decisions is ending.
This opinion piece is outstanding. I am an undergraduate student at a state university and I continue to encounter peers in my international relations classes who either
A.) don't seem to have a grasp of core concepts and they still make it to upper level classes
OR
b.) have the core concepts down but are so driven by pop political ideology (usually anti-government views & at the same time pro-American Empire Lite).
Those who don't know the core concepts of international relations and comparative politics tend to be too worried about not sounding smart by asking questions when they don't understand things. On the other hand those who are fanatics of anti-government and pro-empire tend to be well to do middle class/upper middle class kids who repeat the same lines on loop. When challenged they either dig further in and make outrageous statements that would never translate to actual policy, or they resort to personal attacks on those who question their popular assumptions on, literally everything. To summarize, it is frustrating. It is frustrating to experience this in an academic setting, but to see this kind of "king idiot" mentality play out every time anything comes along that needs honest, thought out discourse in our public institutions. The inability of the majority of our government representatives to see outside of a broken framework and offer new approaches to policy creation and implementation, along with the dominance of money in the political process, will likely reduce our democracy to nothing but a spectacle of out of touch elites fighting for personal gains while forgetting the people.
While, I admit that I have a strong progressive political viewpoint, but I also understand that there are commonalities that all citizens are able to relate to and discuss when attempting to find relative consensus on policies. The polarization and the anti-science, anti-government, anti-reform, anti-transparency perspectives that seem to be getting stronger each day, are detrimental to a sustainable society, environment and economy.
Some Sunday mornings I flip the television to CSPAN's "Washington Journal" Program and I am consistently disgusted and disappointed by the commentary (if you can call it that) which comes from the call in lines. After having various academics and analyst discuss complex and nuanced topics, people call in to spew hate speech or ask questions which are completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. It frustrates me because it is symptomatic of our political culture. Many people are engaged in politics to an extent that they want to demonstrate their belligerence and leave it at that, while others are earnestly attempting to find common ground in order to strengthen political rights and economic opportunities for all.
We need people who are driven by public service, not public pillage to represent a better way forward, one which doesn't place religious doctrine or campaign financiers above inquisitive thinking in the institutions of state power. More so, we need those in power to listen to the findings of scientist (from both the hard sciences and the soft sciences), and to those who tell the stories of everyday life in our society through the arts, civic engagement, and direct contact with their government.
When challenged they either dig further in and make outrageous statements that would never translate to actual policy, or they resort to personal attacks on those who question their popular assumptions on, literally everything
I should state it as follows: or they resort to personal attacks on those who question what they perceive to be popular assumptions/thinking on literally everything.
@ASchultzVF An emotionally charged "Progressive" who believes that he alone grasps the "principles of etc" and yet has not ventured in responsibility beyond class assignments. That defines the problem. It would far more productive to gain the insight of any given Marine Lance Corporal.
Well said. I cannot find a single thing with which to disagree in this article, which is unusual for me
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