Anti-Intellectualism

[sapphi_snake]

This article raises some interesting issues. However, it's silly to say that this all started after 9/11. This is a phenomenon that goes back all the way to the begging of the previous century. You should read Habermas' The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. He argues that a "refeudalization" of the Public Sphere started occuring in the 20th century (the public sphere started losing it's critical democratic aspects and returning to a similar form of the one in the Middle Ages).

There are several reasons why this occured, and you can place some of the blame on media outlets themselves. Games4Fun is right that it's not just people's fault, but the media's aslo, because they lost their critical component. Now they just care about sensational news (that also happens to be trivial).

PR is also to blame for this downfall. Now the media, instead of doing their own research, get their news from the PR of corporations, politicians etc., leading to representative publicity (the politicians, corporations create their own publicity, and create the image that they want to have).

The quote from Nineteen Eighty-Four was nice, but modern society doesn't resemble the one from that book (unless you live in North Korea). Most people just referece taht book due to it's commercial success and popularity, however it's very inaccurate. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World presents a much more accurate illistration of what Western society is becoming, especially when we're talking about "anti-intellectualism".