William Deresiewicz takes a rather sharp blade to a book he recently perused.
Apparently, the book suggests an alternative to a college education: Start a blog.
Among the things it suggests that kids might do to “create and share value” absent a formal higher education is this: “Become a Public Intellectual.” In five easy steps (“Research a social problem you care about deeply…Start a blog…”), the budding thinkers can be on their way.
Start a blog, commence pontificating. There’s obviously little or no need to waste any time on mundane matters such as contemplation, directed thought, evaluation, logic, history, comparative consequences, humility, EXPERIENCE, or a host of other things.
Listen, folks, Socrates was something of a Public Intellectual … an early blogger, you might say … and just look where that took his career.
And now, more than any other time in our known history, our planet is a’swarmin’ with people who believe they have something of value to say to everyone else, i.e. blogs n’ such. (In this regard, I am — obviously — guilty as sin.)
A salient discriminator in all that proffered blather is, of course, the perceived value of the plattered perceptions.
Most, to my way of thinking, have little or none. (Value, that is.) Naturally there are probably a few folks out there . . . okay, maybe one . . . who feel(s) the same way about my shrewdly keen insight, (more’s the pity), but such is life. If you can please everybody all the time, you’re probably Burger King, and who wants to be a meat-headed Public Intellectual?
Hmm … now that I read that, I’m tempted to visit a few D.C. “Think Tanks” and ask for a show of hands. (C’mon, you know I’d end up with a room full.)
At any rate, I think Mr. Deresiewicz’s article deserves a read.
