Chapter 4 - Intellectual Life – Detailed Summary (with additional insights from other relevant literature) from the Book – “Bobos in Paradise” by David Brooks

 

Irving Howe during 1954 mentioned the degradation of American Intellectual Life in the essay – “This Age of Conformity” in Partisan Review. He highlighted how the peak of American Intellectual Life that  coincided with the rise of Bohemianism, detachment from bourgeois life gradually started to lose that spirit and the intellectuals started to bow down to the forces of money, temptations of a better luxurious life, and high standards of living.  Irving mentioned that intellectuals lost a whole intellectual vocation process of dedicating life to values, firmness, and loneliness of ideas by being more credible. They lost out the vocation process by putting their foot in the world of commerce and politics. In a way through this intellectual degradation as per Howe, the intellectuals lost their total freedom in front of the temptation of writing for the New Yorker.  Times have changed. Today, the writers who were condemned in the 50s and 60s for making their books bestsellers are not condemned  for trivializing the intellect by making the book a best seller through different marketing channels. So, currently, intellectuals from any field do not cut themselves off from commerce and pop culture temptations and might perceive intellectual contributors like Hannah Arendt of 1950 as pompous. The intellectuals of the 1950s were portentous and loaded with authority, and they lived and participated in national life by living in a space of universal truth and disinterestedness that  was marked by the need to penetrate beyond the screen of immediate concrete experience. This strive of intellectuals, during the 50s, 60s had created a social divide within the society of Europe, USA where on one side there were people believing only in concrete conditions, situations and on the other hand there were people who believed in themselves to live a life defined by their sensitivity to sacredness, reflectiveness about the nature of the universe.

Later on, Hanah Arendt used a parable to describe this Social Life as a “Festival” where some come to compete, some to trade and the best are the spectators. Hence the slavish men go for hunting fame and gain, while the philosophers and thinkers search for truth by freeing from the large organizations and worldly alliances. Through this liberation, intellectuals who are philosophers and thinkers can see the truth  by fighting stereotyping, and generalization. Intellectuals of USA, Europe in 1950s fought a battle of not being assaulted by journalism, advertising, celebrity culture, philistines (indifference to art), and babbits (middle class standards) as they realized the biggest threat to an intellectual is money and its temptation along with commerce.

Gradually, commerce also attacked the intellectuals of 50s, 60s in USA with a culture called - "Middlebrow Culture"  which was a popular, pretentious, dull culture with high-toned writing, and art with high-end worthy self-congratulation. Middle brows who read books to impress friends were not interested in joining a priesthood of ideas but were rather interested in taking a realm of ideas, dragging it back to the earth into the clutches of middle-class America, and commercial mediocrity by coopting intellect and making it serve an utilitarian interest of the bourgeoisie. With the evolution of “Middlebrow Culture”, a new set of Intellectual Entrepreneurs emerged.

These Entrepreneurs did not make bold pronouncements, cut themselves off from reality, or invent conspiracies with a gloomy worldview. Rather, these entrepreneurs minimize and deny the gap between themselves and everyone around them by reconciling the tangible with the intangible facilitated by the information age. A young college student who wants to be an intellectual entrepreneur today will see dozens of academic stars, people who cross lines by succeeding in intellectual realms, and will be seen also on TV, academic circuits, private consulting firms, OPEDs. The young student will like to idolize Henry Louis Gates (the entrepreneurial Harvard Professor) or Esther Dyson who spins theories at expensive technological conferences.

In the 1970s, a new class emerged which showed that a small and politically liberal intellectual class gained disproportionate influence over the American culture by controlling media, academia, and culture. Today, the gap between intellectuals and everyone else has been reduced because the landscape has been filled with quasi-intellectuals, quasi-academicians, quasi – scholarly and rich people. The word intellectual has changed its meaning from a small group of people to a large class of people who are claiming to be intellectuals.

The small bohemian intellectuals of New York, San Francisco, Boston are now replaced by educated analysts and opinion leaders. Therefore, today’s intellectuals who are intellectual entrepreneurs discuss “Mutual Funds” and get paid in a certain way by thinking in a professional way, with one eye on the clock and on the other hand by conducting in a professional way between a 9 to 5 job and making one ownself marketable and presentable. Therefore, today’s intellectual entrepreneur is represented by Henry Louis Gates (Chairman of The Harvard’s African American Studies) who impulsively says  – “I am an entrepreneur and if I was not in an academy I would have been a CEO and I have Quincy Jones as my hero and Vernon Jordan in on my wall right above John Hope Franklin.”  Largely intellectuals in the evolutionary process from 1950 onwards are seen to participate in an economy of symbolic exchange as mentioned by Bourdieu. In such an economy, an intellectual enters the market place with intellectual, cultural, academic, linguistic and political capital. Throughout the career the intellectual tries to gain capital in a marketplace or tries to convert one form of the capital to another one viz. one intellectual can convert knowledge into a lucrative job, someone might convert it into getting invitation to conferences and someone might use the linguistic capital to destroy fellow colleagues and become popular. Popularity can also come by earning honor, publishing in the reputed journals, and houses and being associated with institutions. Intellectuals as a starting point need to know whom to support and criticise to grow up the ladder in this market place. In order to gradually become an intellectual giant in this market place of symbolic exchange, one starts as a paper people and then gradually becomes a face people. The paper people do all the hard work as interns, assistants to famous intellectuals or academicians or thinkers or professionals. They provide the face people with all the material to blurt out in the media appearances, conferences, and meetings while the face people are mostly busy in attending meetings, shows, interviews, and are on call. Paper people have to take reference from the face people to get placed in better career positions by self-weaning them ultimately from the shadow of the face people at the age of 28. Otherwise, paper people will get stuck and confused within their own status and the status of the face person whom the paper person serves through a self aggrandization by coopting her own status with the status of the face people. This will perpetually become true as self-aggrandizement is the opium of the anonymous. 

However, once the self weaning is done the paper people have to identify a subject niche in the market place considering the future market demand of ideas. Then the paper people have to develop expertise to be called by conferences, talk shows, search committees, shows, broadcasting, and print media. Like Say’s Law, which says that supply creates its own demand, every new entry of a paper people in this marketplace will create a new demand for conferences, outreach medium, and outlets for the paper person to grow through the subject niche. Once the subject niche is defined and identified in this market place, the intellectual (turned from the paper people)  has to create a demeanor to carve out a set of audience for what the intellectual delivers or says in the marketplace or in the society. 

To find out the right audience, the demeanour has to be identified for the intellectual which generally cannot be a moderate radical or an aggressive moderate. A radical has to be aggressive, vehement, adamant, seeking a world of conspiracy, deceit, and paranoia to find an audience for what they deliver as an intellectual. On another note, moderates can be slow, peaceful, placid as supporters of moderate intellectuals will like to see interactions that are more civil, subtle, with rhetorical, uninteresting strokes. Therefore moderate intellectuals will speak, express thoughts slowly, and calmly from a height but no one will remember that thought after a while. However, through this demeanour, they will establish an audience for themselves. Once the demeanor of the intellectual is set in, the intellectual has to define the strategies and path to constantly be relevant and present in all media, broadcasting, and print medium through topics that will never end but will spark attention through the catch-phrase like – “The End of History” where everyone knows that –“History Never Can End”.

Moreover, the intellectual has to present the work in editorial pieces and in all written forms, books even though it is not or will not be read by anyone. A process of praise inflation has to be set in for the work of the intellectual, where a group of intellectuals will continue to praise the work of the intellectual and in reciprocity the intellectual will also praise the work of them. The superficiality of praise will be inflated in a way whereby just looking at the book someone will like it, by reading the first few pages and not completing it someone will love it, and by entirely reading the book someone will praise the book as – “Brilliant”. The intellectual has to keep on writing in books which are defined by their publication houses in the course of the career of the intellectual. The journey will be defined more by the stature of the publication houses and not by the content of the book by the intellectual.  So, a writer’s career should be known by the journey of her publishing houses beginning with University of Chicago Press. This will be followed by W.W.  Norton with the big think tank being directed to Simon Schuster. Finally, this needs to be followed by a blockbuster memoir of an intellectual which should be published by Random House.

Once this stage is set in, the intellectual has to be present in all conferences with the elites, and has to hop in from one conference to the other with a glass of wine and by being flocked by the clan of the same set of people and the high flyers. The conference will function like a – “Stock Exchange of Status” where one will assess the value of fame, and growth through the recognition, sycophancy, flattering by everyone else in the conference. The value of an intellectual will be determined by such a stock exchange by showing how many people are coming to meet and talk to the intellectual and stopping by and greeting, flattering the intellectual in the dinner party and also in the panel with long set of introductions. Gradually, the intellectual also has to be present in the glamour world, TV shows and hang out with the famous rich people from all frontiers of society in TV, Conferences and other meeting platforms like retreats. This mingling will create a crisis of Status – Income Disequilibrium (SID) between the “Intellectual and The Rich”. The intellectual and rich will reach a social equality. However,  while the intellectual will get the recognition during work time, and in socialisation events, they will feel inferior to the rich once they get back to their homes. The rich on the other hand will like to feel significant like the intellectual even though they have the money.

With this convergence, the gap between intellectuals, glamour stars, film stars, business people will reduce. Intellectuals will be concerned about their glamour demeanour and they will realise they all are same as they all have worked hard to be reputed. The cultural  gulf between the classes will be submerged but it will create a new tension – a tension of social annoyance through money.

Conclusion:

In the America of 1950s when middle-class intellectuals socialized with each other, rich was remote to the middle-class intellectuals. Gradually, as time passed, the rich and the intellectuals achieved social equality but with the creation of a Status – Disequilibrium for the middle-class intellectuals in which they spend the day in glory in the workplace but once they are back at home they feel inferior and live a life of mediocrity (by a comparison of themselves with the rich which was remote but now they have mixed). At work the intellectuals get the attention of the Rich and at home they are wondering if they can afford a new car but they also want to stay in the higher income bracket and cant go down to the lower income bracket. So the intellectual who suffers from Status – Income Disequilibrium suffers from the worry of money and reputation and hence she has to look for market opportunities to find a market niche for himself or herself. The worry of the rich in this process of evolution of intellectual degradation has to be to gain significance. Rich in this process is paid to do dull mundane tasks whereas the intellectual is paid to do interesting and provoking staffs and at the same time becomes a Status-Income Disequilibrium (SID) sufferer. SID is actually an evolutionary remnant of the class war between the bourgeois business person and the bohemian intellectual who  glowered at each other from distance for ages and now they mingle and want to become each other and could not become  like a mingled identity due to the tension of money. The intellectual of today therefore is not any more an identity of loft ideas, self exiled personalities from mainstream but they are wise with a feet and larger understanding of both sides of the world. Through this evolution of intellectuals, they are more like William Whyte of 1950s and they are looking out for an audience of their work using different broadcasting, communication, marketing modes. Today’s such intellectuals are trying to be meaningful by finding out their niche audiences and create a substantial impact just as William Whyte was doing in the 1950s!