FRIDAY, 25 JUNE 2004
(How little can you know about yourself and still function, as an adult, within the limits of what is considered “normal” by society?)
Without people, no community can exist. Without sufficient numbers of men and women, and people with different talents and abilities, no community can stay healthy and prosper.
The Community – the body of people who share a set of cultural, linguistic and other values in a particular place – provide the individual with a (sometimes temporary) working identity/self-model composed of birth data, cultural data, and as the years go by, needs of that particular community at that particular time. Most people accept this GIVEN model of who and what they are – to varying degrees, but the required minimum quota of acceptance is reached among the population for the community to at least remain standing.
What then of those people who are sceptical and critical, who are always scratching around for answers to questions many regard as unnecessary; people for whom it seems a lifetime ambition to discover the formulas of how things work, people who do not want to accept things as they currently are? Ultimately, the Community can also not remain standing without the contribution of these people – including some scientists, psychologists, sociologists, historians, philosophers and academics from other fields, writers, poets, artists and musicians.
The primary contribution of these individuals is to provide people with ideas through which they might develop a better understanding of their existence. These individuals must also serve as a counterweight to irrational group politics, and associated violent movements that provide people in uncertain times with a firmer understanding of who and what they are, what their roles in society should be, and how the value and meaning of their lives ought to be interpreted. Of course, there are intellectuals who themselves are guilty of driving destructive ideologies into the minds of people. For precisely this reason, it is vital to promote constructive ideas, and to encourage the advocates of these ideas.
Intellectuals take it upon themselves to make members of the wider community aware of the destructive nature of certain beliefs, ideologies and related movements. They also play a leading role in the process of distinguishing between what keeps Civilised Society anchored in soil fertile for growth and progress, and what causes it to tear apart at the seams.
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[How much does the “ordinary” man or woman on the street understand of what causes their community to tear apart at the seams? And at what point should the Intellectual Vanguard in the Battle for Healthy Society jump on their soapboxes?
I believe that if most working adults are too busy to contemplate supposedly more academic issues such as the relationship between language and “truth”, they probably would be too busy to see Rome fall around them – which, as most people know, never happens in one day.
Intelligence is not what is relevant here – a medical doctor is not necessarily smarter than a chemical engineer because he understands why the latter’s stomach keeps aching. So, too, with the Intellectual Vanguard, whose interests and passion for certain issues sharpen their eyes to see things before they become painfully obvious to everyone, and possibly too late.]
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