Kees van Dongen - Portrait of the Commander Edouard Requin, 1918
I spent the most of my intellectual majority learning about government, totalitarianism, war, politics, technology, economics and journalism. I peppered that with literary and science fiction. I saw myself as a developing intellectual with a moral obligation to write against war and totalitarianism, in the mold of Noam Chomsky. I had only vague dreams, without a sense of how I would go about molding my life.
When I first thought of writing this post, I wanted to find some way to undermine how I spent my time. It took a lot of personal study on my part to undo most of the damage done to my understanding of the world by my schooling and the general culture. Somehow, whatever the heck I did prepared me to handle what I’m going through now. I can’t fault myself for that.
Perhaps I didn’t take it all of the way because I understood, on some level, that I had chosen that path to atone for guilt that never belonged to me in the first place.
As Chomsky wrote in his 1967 essay linked above,
For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us. The responsibilities of intellectuals, then, are much deeper than what Macdonald calls the “responsibility of people,” given the unique privileges that intellectuals enjoy.
I was part of that privileged minority. I don’t think that it ever quite washes off. I had a lot of spare time and curiosity to burn on intellectual pursuits, along with all the books that I could purchase. I felt guilty for receiving these advantages that I had never earned.
At this juncture, of course, I would not characterize my upbringing as “privileged.” Maybe I’ve stayed at the Savoy in London than 99.9999% of human beings that have ever lived, but I don’t think it did that much for me in the long run. I have nothing to be guilty about, and have no need to be motivated by that emotion.
Articles echoing this one show up in publications like the Chronicle of Higher Education all the time, imploring young students from wealthy backgrounds to join the academic priesthood to atone for the supposed sins of their parents. I’m sure that I wasn’t alone in being influenced by this spurious line of thinking. The tale goes like this: you were born wealthy and clever. It is good to spend the rest of your life feeling guilty about this, and turning your advantages towards helping those less fortunate than you.
In this way, the brightest and most compassionate people in society end up ensnared in academia, the media and in non-profits throwing themselves at an iredeemably corrupt system in the attempt to somehow turn it to good.
It has never worked and never will. I would posit that without the concerted efforts of such well-meaning people, the government would not be able to keep going. This vast amount of malinvested effort goes towards apologizing for the state and expanding it further, in the name of repairing it to some good purpose.
Now that I think of it more, these institutions prey on vulnerable young people, manipulating them by preying on their pervasive feelings of guilt – emotions that would not be present without child abuse. They turn their desire to be virtuous to ill end. I feel sad just thinking about it.
In some ways, I do have something of a responsibility – to myself, to promote reason. I have typically shied away from anything smacking of responsibility, even to myself. It’s frightening for me, and it doesn’t jive with my self-image.
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February 18, 2009 at 4:54 pm
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