31 May 2001, 833 words
If somebody accuses me of writing intellectual drivel, I have three choices: I can ignore them, I can refute them by dissecting their arguments, or I can thank them for pointing out my errors. But I could never do like UWI Pro-Vice Chancellor Hilary Beckles and send a letter threatening legal action. For me, that wouldn't really be an option.
In my column last week I highlighted the awful prose, flawed reasoning and hollow ideology of an article Beckles had written linking West Indies cricket and globalisation. Beckles, according to his lawyer, feels that I have damaged his intellectual reputation. All I can say is that my brain is either a lot more powerful than I thought, or Beckles's reputation a lot more fragile.
The UWI professor's litigious response made me think of Lloyd Best who, despite the glass house of his own prose, frequently pelts stones at our educated elites. Some years ago, I took Best to task over his convoluted prose style, as well as some of his philosophical concepts which I found utterly silly. Instead of suing me for damaging his intellectual reputation, Best publicly responded to the points I had raised and, what is more, gave me space on the pages of his own journal, the Trinidad and Tobago Review, to expand my criticisms.
I still abhor Best's prose, but there is no doubt that he embodies the attitude of a true thinker: unafraid of debate, committed to freedom of speech, and willing to adopt new ideas. This is a rare thing in Trinidad and Tobago. In my column last week, I opined that, in any modern society, a cadre of genuine intellectuals is absolutely necessary for social progress. I was not talking merely of technical experts, necessary though they are. But, for societies like ours, which are still grappling with basic concepts of nationhood and identity, intellectuals who are able to analyse and construct social, political and philosophical paradigms are equally crucial.
Physicist and Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann argues: "...we human beings are now confronted with immensely complex ecological, political, economic and social problems. When we tackle such difficult problems, we naturally tend to break them up into more manageable pieces. That is a useful practice but it has serious limitations...We need a corpus of people who consider that it is important to take a serious and professional crude look at the whole system. It has to be a crude look, because you will never master every part or every interconnection. You would think most journalists would do this. But they don't. Unfortunately, in a great many places in our society, including academia and most bureaucracies, prestige accrues principally to those who study carefully some [narrow] aspect of a problem - a trade, a technology, or a culture - while discussion of the big picture is relegated to cocktail party conversation. That is crazy."
An additional limitation is that the influence of individuals capable of rigorous, integrated thought is rarely or never obvious. Does the work of Best, Denis Solomon, David Rudder, Diana Mahabir-Wyatt, William Lucie-Smith and a few others actually influence the real world? Do their ideas affect government policies or create more liberal attitudes or raise ethical standards?
It is impossible to say. Even if the small minority is having an effect, it would be so gradual that any concrete results would accrue over generations. But that is how all societies progress.
The thing about ideas is that, over time, they tend to percolate into the wider society and shape institutions and political and economic relations. Successful societies tend to be those where good ideas have marginally more sway over bad ones. "Half the useful work in the world consists of combating the harmful work," wrote Bertrand Russell and this, indeed, is one of the most important functions of real intellectuals: to help keep harmful ideas at bay.
Such ideas can never be entirely eliminated, for the simple reason that bad thinkers will always vastly outnumber good ones. Thus, every week, the newspaper-reading public is exposed to false information about history, religion, science, economics and politics proffered by all the Hindu columnists, as well as the dead ideologies of people like Bukka Rennie and David Abdullah, and the Afrocentrist nonsense of Selwyn Cudjoe and Trevor Millett.
In our public discourse, the vast majority of commentators seem blissfully unaware that paradigms like Marxism, Freudian theory, behaviourism and cultural determinism have all been proven hopelessly wrong. They are content to pronounce on matters like psychological health, culture-building, social and political reform, or globalisation, without any deep thought and shallower research.
Battling this ignorant herd can sometimes seem an impossible task. But impossible tasks are the most fun, and I have faith that good ideas must, in the long run, triumph over bad ones. As Albert Einstein put it: "The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency."
Copyright ©2001 Kevin Baldeosingh