Authorial_04_LA_FINAL_low_with watermark

In the anti-intellectual climate of
today, we see that the “dumbing down”
of higher education is at once the
lapdog of the post-industrial feudalistic
hegemony and the running dog of
bourgeois complacency, and although
this is rather obvious, what is not so
apparent, at least on the surface, is that it
is also the bugbear of the all but invisible
intelligentsia, which has disappeared
before everyone’s eyes but its own to
the point where not only can no one
see it, it can scarcely even see itself. The
diploma mills compete to turn out, not
ranks of scholars or thinkers, but the
eager drudges that are the mainstay of
bureaucracies everywhere, assuring that
society remains unthreatened by new
ideas and that the long-legged wolf of
consumerism runs unchecked as the
lead dog in the world-wide Iditarod of
capitalist oppression. Perhaps serious
intellectuals should consider adopting
The Negro National Anthem* as their
own and rally against the intramural
complacency that has plagued our
universities and colleges for decades.
At least the tenured ones need not
fear reprisals for insubordination other
than the revocation of those human
rights that they have already abdicated,
consigning intellectuals to the role of
invisible strangers, and denying that
adherence to outspoken intelligent views
was a human right to begin with.
Though it seems ludicrous in retrospect,
Maoist rhetoric, while in itself fiercely
anti-intellectual and of the basest kneejerk
simplicity, helps apply a grimly
humorous perspective to the plight
of the world’s intellectual community,
if, in any real sense, it can be said to
still possess one. The two great social
philosophies, Laissez-Faire Capitalism
and Stalinist-Maoist Communism, have
supplanted religion in modern times,
and while the conflict raged, served to
mitigate each the deleterious effects of
the other on the hapless population of
the world. During this time intellectual
pursuits and scholarship were suppressed
to maintain a unified ideological front,
equally on both sides, while maintaining
the fiction that it was only a temporary
measure. Now that worldwide
consumerism is the sole ideology, and
The Job has displaced The God as the
ideal, there is nothing left to hold back
the tide of rootlessness and destruction
as it sweeps through traditional cultures
and attacks the natural world, all in
the name of progress. Thus educational
institutions turn out workers rather
than thinkers and the goal is a better
Job thus more buying power hence
more consumerism ad infinitum ad
nauseum. Only the mind itself remains
unconquered, and by keeping the pursuit
of truth at bay with promises of spare
parts and money, intellectualism is fast
becoming an historical curiosity, for
the agenda of oppression can only be
opposed by truth, just as darkness can
only be conquered by light. We must
turn away, like the Garveyites of old,
from empty promises, and learn to rely
on ourselves alone for the ideas that
sustain our mental lives, for race is no
longer an issue when our very humanity
is at stake.
We, the current generation of potential
scholars, must shake off the lethargy that
comes with a surfeit of entertainment
and create our own intellectual
renaissance. It is long overdue, and
we can no longer be content with
inspiration from past great thinkers
like Henry David Thoreau in his
Walden wilderness, or Marcus Garvey
gleefully exiled to Ghana, or even V. S.
Naipaul, returned, at last, to Trinidad.
Learning and the pursuit of knowledge
is not a football match between the
red team and the blue team, but must
be recognized as a struggle with the
mechanics of metaphysics, lest our
own ivy clad towers of refuge, like
castles made of sand, crumble into a
sea of mediocrity. A new intelligentsia
must be cut out of whole cloth, or like
Pallas Athena spring full blown from
the minds of our generation. We must
create for ourselves what no one will
create for us.
Ted Torgersen is a published author. His book, Out of Exile, “represents his
life’s work and recaptures the internal harmonics that flowed so freely in his
youth.” Make sure to catch him at Authors Press’ booth number 937 on April
13, 2019. He will be signing copies of his book and will talk about his work and
inspiration. You may reach him via email mongoosedentist@aol.com.
authorial magazine | 59