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To be a real intellectual is to be highly intelligent; and to be highly intelligent entails having high 'general intelligence' (or 'g') which is (as a generalization - that is to say when looking at
group correlations) general to all specific cognitive functions such as the various academic subjects, general knowledge, reading ability, problem solving, learning for examinations, and the special IQ tests.
(g was discovered by noticing that all these cognitive measures correlated positively with each other in group studies.)
To be gifted in general is in contrast to being gifted in particular; to have a general cognitive aptitude - regardless of context - is to think in a way which does
not depend on context; to be able to think in a way which applies across all cognitive contexts is to think abstractly - that is, to abstract from the specific and deploy the general.
So, whatever it is, intelligence is about abstraction.
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Intelligence is not is what intellectuals
do, it is what intellectuals
are. It is not something switched off and on as required - it is the way that intellectuals think.
And since being intelligent is about abstraction, so intellectuals are abstractors - not by choice, but by their very nature.
Abstraction is the pair of spectacles through which intellectuals perceive the world.
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Thus intellectuals have devised, and in general supported, the trend towards abstraction in public discourse which has characterized modernity.
This has been largely pernicious, because as a rule only intellectuals can operate in the realm of abstractions. So that when public discourse has been made abstract, non-intellectuals can only accept it or reject it - non-intellectuals cannot understand abstraction and they cannot evaluate abstraction.
And when intellectuals have -
en masse - abandoned their responsibility to understand and evaluate the abstractions which other intellectuals have introduced into public discourse - then there is corruption and wickedness.
And when intellectuals lose their intelligence, then nobody at all can understand and evaluate abstractions - so society at large can only have cheer or boo abstractions - implement them blindly and uncomprehendingly; or reject them lock-stock and barrel: they cannot work with them.
That is precisely the situation of current modernity.
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Our society has been saddled with abstractions from earlier generations which the intellectuals of modernity partly cannot, and partly will not, understand. Public discourse concerning these abstractions therefore merely amounts to hooray or boo.
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Political life is dominated by abstractions such as democracy, equality, justice, rights - these are not only not understood - but there is no effort to understand them: they are slavishly or cynically implemented - or else rejected. Either way, the process is inarticulate and instinctive merely.
Our society is utterly dominated by bureaucratic power, and utterly rejects the validity of personal power; and public discourse is utterly incapable of recognizing, comprehending or modifying this situation.
Art (high status art) has been for a century and more, dominated by abstraction. Nobody likes it and nobody can use it except as a career path. Art, which was great, has been destroyed as a force for good.
Science too has been destroyed by 'peer review' - a vague abstraction, vaguely defined and never evaluated, little more than a buzz word - yet dumbly implemented and dumbly cheered as science is converted to
nothing more than cynical, lying bureaucratic careerism - so uncritical that it loses the capacity even to notice what has happened. Science is now merely another something to cheer or to boo.
Abstract 'physics-like' concepts of the Christian God have been inherited from past intellectuals, some (at least) of whom could work with them: perfection, infinite, omni-potent/-scient/-present/, paradoxical formulations of the Trinity. Modern Christians, including modern Christian intellectuals as a class, can only defend or attack these formulations, they cannot comprehend or critique them - and they cannot use them in their personal lives.
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Past intellectuals made and gave society some good things some bad things. But modern intellectuals, as a class, are not intellectuals but
pseudo-intellectuals. They occupy the social niches of intellectuals, but they are not intellectuals: they either will-not or cannot, but certainly
do not do abstraction.
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In general, modern intellectuals merely
defend socially-dominant abstractions. Since their position depends on a (false) status as 'abstraction experts', and since modern intellectuals are (as a class) corrupt and incompetent careerists
merely - modern intellectuals tend simply to defend those abstractions which seem likely to maintain their (false) status in the short-term.
Such is the situation. Modern (pseudo-) intellectuals are nearly all corrupt and overwhelming incompetent in the abstract realm - yet that is what they are
for. They cannot and/or will not perform the intellectual work to
know abstractions; but are too dishonest to admit the fact, and too incompetent even to comprehend the fact.
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Modern society is being killed by abstraction, and modern so-called intellectuals are cheering-on the process.
It would seem an easy matter to improve things by discarding the murderous abstractions and dealing instead with specific persons and specific situations - but this is the one thing which intellectuals are united to oppose: and the intellectuals are the rulers.
(Rulership being a social position passively inherited from their predecessors - with institutions such as schools and colleges replacing genetics.)
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So modernity is not just stuck, but being actively goaded towards destruction by supposed-ntellectuals who are clever enough to pursue their short term status, but too dumb and dishonest to understand what is going-on or even to know that they don't understand it.
Societies primary problems are regarded as incomprehensible or insoluble even in situations where the problem is simple, the answers obvious. Meanwhile the modern intellectuals occupy themselves on shadow games using abstract concepts like counters; playing a game for which they cannot learn the rules - and they wouldn't play by the rules even if they had learned them.
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Consequently, speaking functionally -
there are no intellectuals at all in modern society: that is to say, modern society has no class of persons who actually
do the job of understanding and evaluating abstractions.
Instead there is a class of pseudo-intellectuals who at most pretend to do this job; and often deny that this job even needs doing - and do something different instead. (Especially Leftist political advocacy under other names and disguises.)
Since the social role of intellectuals is now being performed only by incompetent pseuds and lying fakes,
nobody is doing the job:
the job is not being done.
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