The Progressive Meme Shop

by Daniel Rigney

You may have seen Woody Allen’s time-travel comedy, “Midnight in Paris,” about a popular Hollywood screen-writer working on a serious novel about a guy who opens a little “nostalgia shop” selling memorabilia from half-imaginary golden eras of the past.

Seeing this movie made me want to open a little meme shop specializing in customized words and phrases that refract future thought and action in progressive directions.  I’m picturing a little shop of hope for this pessimistic time of horrors.

What I’m imagining is  just  the opposite of what conservative Republican propagandist Frank Luntz  sells in his little shop,“Word Doctor,” on the other side of the street.  Luntz, whose company specializes in creating and managing words and images for his right-wing clients, describes himself as an “Orwellian” manipulator of emotions – and he means that in a good way.  [NPR interview with Terry Gross, “Fresh Air,”  1/9/200

I momentarily thought of naming my progressive shop the Meme Boutique, but I quickly discovered  that name had already been taken by a women’s clothing store in Raleigh, North Carolina. Besides, the name was way too chi-chi for my taste.

How about the Meme Factory? Sounds like an assembly line operation. I wasn't sure an industrial metaphor would evoke the creative spirit of the kind of place I’m imagining. Too brutal.

The Philosophy Shop?  No, Jay Leno (a philosophy major in college) has already laid claim to that name. Anyway, it's way too non-anti-intellectual for this country.

Me!Me! ?  Too narcissistic.

Progressive Memes?  It says what it is, but is it catchy enough? Does it have viralocity and iconability? [Text to self:  How does the word "progressive" do in Luntz-style focus groups?  Is "liberal" too bell-bottomy these days?]

Or how about calling the shop Manipulative Memes?  No. That wouldn’t set it apart from any commercial ad agency --  including Luntz's "Word Doctor." For Luntz, it's not an estate tax; it's a "death tax." It's not oil drilling; it's "energy exploration." It's not global warming, it's "climate change," which doesn't sound nearly as scary.  It's all in what you call it, and in the audience's emotional reaction to what you call it. 

Why are there not more Frank Luntz's working on behalf of progressive causes?  A progressive might, for instance, call for a more equitable economy (not the current "dog eat dog"or "everyone for himself"  economy); for energy conservation and clean 21st-century technologies (to supplant our reliance on "dirty energy" and "dirty industrial" technology); and for sustainable  environmental policies to replace the "slash and burn" policies that are now turning the North Pole into the "North Pool."

Two teams can play this game, Frank, and our team is just getting warmed up.

Finally,  I considered calling my little corner of e-space  the  Meme Shoppe.  That name, it turns out, has not been overcommercialized yet.  I hesitated for a moment, thinking that to call anything a "shoppe" outside the former British empire would be laughable on several levels.

But then I thought “laughable” might be a good thing, so I decided to go with it as a provisional brand name.  Nowadays it's all about the brand in our frantic attention economy.

The Meme Shoppe, if it ever actually exists, will be a branded shop that makes and sells more brands – a cultural replicator and mutator in the service of  worthy causes. 

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viralocity, iconability, meme factory, north pool, everyone for himself economy, dog eat dog economy, meme shoppe, meme shop, mutator, replicator, laughable ideas, manipulative memes, progressive memes, philosophy shop, meme boutique, frank lutz, word doctor, plays one on tv, words refract thought, mad men, me!me!, branding+herding, attention economy, daniel rigney, danagram, open+call, politics, business, news, midnight in paris, woody allen, owen wilson+midnight, non-anti-intellectual. half-imagining, orwellian is good? fresh air+terry gross=fank luntz, emotional minipulation, rwellian, bell-bottom words, frantic attention economy, attention economy, progressive meme shop, counter-shop

Anti-Intellectualism in 21st-Century America

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When we consider that the United States was founded largely by intellectuals – Jefferson, Adams, Madison and others – it is ironic that we as a nation have rarely celebrated the value of intellect, except when it can be shown to produce financial gain.  This is amply documented in American historian Richard Hofstadter’s modern classic, Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1964.

Hofstadter defined anti-intellectualism broadly to refer to an attitude of “resentment and suspicion” toward the “critical, creative, and contemplative side of mind.”   He identified at least three distinct expressions of this attitude, which we may call anti-rationalism, anti-elitism, and unreflective instrumentalism .  Nearly thirty years after the book first appeared, I wrote an analytical essay examining its major themes and their continued relevance to American life (Rigney 1991).  

As we now approach the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s publication, it will be worth our while to revisit Hofstadter and to ask whether his diagnosis of our cultural condition is still pertinent today. This brief essay is based on, and offers some further reflections on, my previous article.

Anti-rationalism

                Hofstadter begins by analyzing anti-rationalism, which manifests itself as a suspicion and hostility toward the value of critical thought and reasoned discourse in general.  This form of anti-intellectualism, which tends to regard intellect as cold and passionless, has a long lineage in our history.  It is rooted particularly in the history of American Protestantism since the Great Awakening of the early 17^th century. 

                    The Puritan ideal of the minister as an intellectual leader, Hofstadter writes, “was steadily weakened in the face of the evangelical ideal of the minister as a popular crusader and exhorter.”  This evangelical tradition lives on today in the emotional  appeal of charismatic and fundamentalist clergy, who commonly challenge the more secular culture of critical discourse, especially as it is practiced and propagated in modern universities. 

                   Conservative religious hostility toward modern science, and particularly toward the cosmology of the big bang, organic evolution and climate science, is rooted in this evangelical tradition.  The religious right directs hostility toward the humanities as well when they, like the sciences, seem to  relativize moral teachings, promote a secular worldview, and present a godless vision of the universe and our place in it.

                Underlying this religious anti-rationalism is the fear that critical discourse will challenge traditional sources of authority and thus undermine the foundations of absolute belief.  Hofstadter acknowledges that these fears are not entirely groundless.  Critical thinking really does threaten the unexamined  traditions of the past.  He writes that “left free, there is nothing it will not reconsider, analyze, throw into question.”  Authoritarian regimes, whether religious or secular, know this and suppress freedom of thought and speech accordingly.  In the domain of critical thinking, nothing is sacred – except perhaps  reasoned discourse itself.

                Today the culture of reasoned discourse appears to be at a low ebb in the United States.  Wars of words between traditional conservatives and more secular modernists fill the airwaves and the cables,  polarizing our national politics.  The messages propagated at the extremes – slogans, soundbites and simplistic talking points easily learned and repeated by uncritical thinkers – belie the increasing and frightening complexity of the realities they describe.  Such messages are fueled by what we might call complexiphobia in the public at large, the anxious yearning for simple answers in times that are anything but simple.

Anti-elitism

                A second kind of anti-intellectualism identified by Hofstadter, anti-elitism, manifests itself in the rise of populist political movements which express mistrust and resentment toward the educated elite and their presumed claims to superior knowledge and wisdom.  Public respect for the highly educated has waxed and waned through American history.         

                 Hofstadter notes that at the founding of the new republic, the leaders were the intellectuals.  Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues were drawn largely from a propertied and learned class, a class of gentlemen.  Soon after the founding, however,  this educated elite confronted opposition from a grass-roots populist upsurge represented most notably by Andrew Jackson, the rough and ready man of the people. 

                 Later, during the Progressive era, the nation gained a new respect for intellect, now represented by an emerging stratum of scholar-experts capable of helping  to manage the growing complexities of an industrial order.  The country elected Woodrow Wilson, former president of Princeton University, as its leader.

                In the twentieth century we have seen political expressions of anti-intellectualism on both the left and right.  On the left, Hostadter observes strains of anti-intellectualism in the blue-collar labor movement, expressing feelings of anger and resentment toward an educated elite drawn from the Ivy Leagues and other bastions of higher learning.  Blue-collar workers, whose educations were often earned in what Eugene Debs called the “hard school of human experience,” looked askance at booklearning.  The perception that the educated elite “thinks they’re better than we are” survives to this day in working-class populist culture.

                From the right, attacks on university faculties in the McCarthy era of the 1950’s, and later George Wallace’s tirade against what he called “pointy-headed intellectuals” in the 1960s, remind us that populism is not easily cast in simple left-right terms.  The contemporary Tea Party movement has effectively mobilized many of the same resentments that McCarthy and Wallace did, arousing hostility toward  “ liberal elitists” who “think they know what’s good for us.”

                Interestingly, conservative ideologists today frequently make a distinction between the cultural elite and the economic elite.  In this view, the former  includes most liberal media and politicians, Hollywood celebrities, and university professors, while the latter includes most corporate rich and super-rich.  Oddly, members of this financial elite largely escape populist wrath unless they are seen to have benefited outrageously from the recession that has left so many others without jobs or homes.  Populist anger toward liberal political elites in particular, whether deserved or not, appears to have played a significant role in the defeat of the Democratic Party in the recent mid-term Congressional elections, widely viewed as a rebuff of the policies of the Obama administration.

                Harvard historian James Kloppenberg, in his new book Reading Obama (2011: xv.; see also Cohen 2010), contends that Barak Obama is one of only a few intellectuals to have held the office of President in American history.  (Kloppenberg names Jefferson, Madison,  John and John Quincy Adams, and Lincoln as the others, with Wilson and the Roosevelts also honorably mentioned.) 

                  Perhaps indicative of our national tendency toward anti-intellectualism, the philosopher-president is a rare breed in our history.  No doubt many presidents have been intelligent, but few have been intellectual in Kloppenberg’s view.  The fact that Obama has muted his intellect in public when he talks to “the folks” in campaign appearances, displaying instead the common touch as he seeks to connect with his audiences at a personal level, suggests that populist anti-elitism is still alive and well in American politics.

Unreflective Instrumentalism

                Hofstadter identifies a third kind of anti-intellectualism, which I have elsewhere called unreflective instrumentalism, or the devaluation of forms of thought that do not promise relatively immediate payoffs.  In American culture, “payoffs” typically means money.  Instrumentalists want to know the cash value of an idea.  This attitude derives most directly, Hofstadter argues, from our predominant economic system, capitalism.  Instrumentalism is not inimical to reason per se, but only to reason which does not serve some “practical” end, such as making money. 

                But this attitude is usually held without much reflection.  It insists on practicality, but it never inquires very deeply into the meanings of the word “practical.”  Is a song or a painting practical?  Only if it makes  money.  Are pure mathematics and science practical?  Only if they result in the solution of “real world” problems – another phrase that is almost always invoked unreflectively.  Is philosophy a real-world activity?  One might argue, if arguments mattered to the anti-intellectual, that philosophy is in fact the most practical thing we possess – the basic operating system upon which all of our important decisions about reality are based.

                Hofstadter observes that how we value intellect is profoundly reflected in our views of education.  Some years ago the educator Alexander Astin (1987) conducted the first annual national survey of the attitudes of first-year college students.  Astin found that over several decades, undergraduates have trended steadily away from viewing the college years as a time to develop a meaningful philosophy of life.  Increasingly and overwhelmingly they, and probably their parents as well, now view higher education more instrumentally, as a means of pursuing material success. 

                  This attitude  is understandable enough in light of the hyperinflationary costs of higher education and the burden of debt that saddles most college students after graduation.  Moreover, the current job market for recent graduates is fiercely competitive, and the liberal arts are continually having to defend their value, as they should.  But to be a truly well-educated person is to be concerned, as the saying goes, not just with how to make a living, but with how to make a life.  Narrow vocationalism is a liability if it constricts the development of the whole person.  As I have written elsewhere (Rigney 1991:  447), neither bread nor philosophy is valuable as an end in itself,  but both are valuable for what they contribute to human well-being.  The perennial task of intellect is to reflect critically upon what ends, both material and ideal, are worth pursuing.

                We find unreflective tendencies in American culture not only in purely vocational conceptions of education, but also in the messages communicated via the mass media (both old and new) and popular entertainment, which are sometimes quite literally mindless.   We often hear  that we live in an “information age,” but this is also an age of misinformation and even disinformation.   If we are really living in the information age, then why are we so poorly informed?  Never before have the sources of our messages – cable news, Wikipedia and the web, Twitter, Facebook, i-things generally – been so diverse and needed such subtle and discerning intellectual skills to evaluate and interpret.   Never have we had such sophisticated communication technologies  as we have today. Yet have the quality of our messages, both incoming and outgoing, advanced with them?  What if we had the most advanced communication devices ever, but had little worth communicating through them?

             Anti-intellectualism, then , is no simple thing.  It takes multiple forms and derives from multiple sources in the dominant institutions of our culture.  Anti-rationalism has its roots largely in traditional religious institutions that seek to preserve elements of a simpler, pre-modern view of the world amid burgeoning complexity.  Anti-elitism finds its roots in populist political movements  that live on today in the resentments of the less advantaged.  Instrumentalism grows out of the material values and economic motivations of capitalism.  Each of these forms of anti-intellectualism has its own distinctive character and provenance; each poses its own distinctive threat toward educational policy and practice; and each persists and even thrives in contemporary American life.

REFERENCES:

Astin, Alexander. 1987.  “The American Freshman:  National Norms for Fall, 1986.” Los Angeles: Council on Education and UCLA.

Cohen, Patricia.  2010.  “In Writings of Obama, a Philosophy is Unearthed.”  New York Times, October     28: C1.

Hofstadter, Richard. 1963. Anti-intellectualism in American Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Kloppenberg, James T.  2011.  Reading Obama.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Rigney, Daniel.  1991, “Three Kinds of Anti-intellectualism.”  Sociological Inquiry 61 (4): 434-51.

Daniel Rigney is professor emeritus of sociology at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is  currently a Complimentary Visiting Scholar in the humanities at Rice University in Houston.  He can be contacted at drigney3@gmail.com.

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Selective Attention Deficit Disorder (SADD)

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By Daniel Rigney
Do you have Selective Attention Deficit Disorder?  Here are several warning signs to watch for:
You’re a conservative (or liberal) and expose yourself only to news stories that support your viewpoint.
You remember and talk about only stories that support your viewpoint.
You try to engage your son-in-law in conversation about these stories at every possible opportunity.
You tune out your mother-in-law every time she starts moving her lips.
Symptoms of SADD take the general form: “You X (attend/remember/talk) selectively to Y (parent/child/other family member or friend/anyone who will listen) about Z (guns/unfinished chores/bedtimes/something Rush Limbaugh said/other).
What SADD symptoms have you noticed in your own life?  Please take a moment to send your symptoms to the comment section of Danagram (search: Salon Danagram) or e-mail drigney3@gmail.com.  Call a doctor if symptoms last for more than four years.
 Danagram
(search: Salon Danagram)
                      

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Secret Journal. Do Not Read.

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By Daniel Rigney
Houston novelist and playwright Nancy Geyer (gladly would she teach and gladly learn) has been guiding me and about a dozen of my fellow scribblers through the looking glass of writing this semester in a Rice University continuing studies course. One of our very first questions in class was “What is a personal journal anyway?”  It turns out there are many  kinds.
A journal may go by other names. Younger people (or older), and especially females, may call it a diary.  Manly men may call it their captain’s log, or playbook, or even give it some bogus name like Garage Tool Inventory to make sure no one is tempted to read it. I call my journal Danagram, to suggest “telegram” (a brief communication) and  “anagram.” (an amusing word puzzle, such as my beloved daily Jumble).
Ms. Geyer recommends that we write PRIVATE on the covers of our journals to dissuade others from intruding on our inner thoughts and lives.  I’ve hit upon an even better idea.  Why not record your thoughts in a blog and post them on the Internet?  No one will find them there, probably not even members of your own family --  the ones for whom PRIVATE on a book cover would be an open invitation to the joys of reading.
So a few weeks ago I decided to post Danagram at Open Salon, a great place to visit but an even better place to live. No one will find me here.  It’s the same strategy I used nearly 30 years ago to escape the notice of a university president for whom I toiled at the time. I hid out in the library because I knew he never went there. Worked like a charm.
Thank you for not reading.

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Hypochondria Digest

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By Daniel Rigney
Does hypochondria run in your family?  All the more reason to subscribe today to Hypochondria Digest! 
HD!  brings you the very latest in research and urban legend from the frontiers of medical science, giving you information you can use and spread to others. Find out what the latest studies and infomercials show, and what you can do to protect yourself and those you love from the growing concerns that many experts have about your future.
Here are some current stories from this month’s issue. Subscribe now before it’s too late.

Food Is Medicine:  Five Recipes for a Longer, More Flavorless Life
Doctors Who Carry Sickness from Patient to Patient: Hidden Epidemic?
Top 10 Health Hazards That You May Be Overlooking
Can Hypochondria Itself Cause Illness? The Answer May Disturb You
Guarding Now Against the Undiscovered New Illnesses of Tomorrow
Your Lab Results Are Back: Do You Really Want to See Them?
The Myth of the “Anxiety-Industrial Complex”: Who Really Profits From Health Fears?
Summer’s Here: Stay Inside, But Take Extra Vitamin D
Did You Know That Mosquitoes, Spiders and Roaches Are Moving to the Outer Suburbs?
They Have a Cute Name. But Are Dust Bunnies Really Harmless?
RomneyCare: Is It For You and Yours?
How Hosting a Tea Party Can Improve Your Health and Lower Your Taxes Forever

Hypochondria Digest is brought to you by some of America’s most trusted names in insurance, pharmaceuticals, home security, health food and tabloid media. Neither HD! nor any of our sponsors is responsible for raising fears that may cause you to invest in your family’s future by buying more of their products than you can reasonably afford. Our aim is only to raise public awareness of all the things in your diet and lifestyle that might prevent you from living forever.
We inform. You decide. Ask about our gift subsriptions!

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Fresh Euphemisms for Retirement

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By Daniel Rigney
In today’s column we’ll consider some fresh and creative ways to euphemize the cultural shame of retiring a little early in American society.  This is a subject I know something about.
My wife and I are academicians with a newly-empty nest.  I have more than 35 years of college teaching under my robe, and when my wife received an auspicious offer of a job at a university in another city, we decided that I could afford to resign my long-held position and follow her there.
I was not quite old enough yet to qualify for reduced-benefit Social Security, but I was frankly burned out and ready for a rest –  I mean a reinvention of myself.
No one warned me how hard it would be to describe myself as “retired” at the tender age of 61. I had previously planned to put in another five years or so on the treadmill, and I didn’t feel good about getting off before finishing my full workout.  I am among the “young old,” as sociologists call us, and it seemed a bit early for me to be hanging up my battered briefcase.
I don’t know what the word “retired” suggests to you. Tired out? Used up? Badly in need of a rest or a reward for years of toil?  All true, perhaps, but none of these sounded good to me.
These were all dysphemisms.  I needed a few interesting-sounding euphemisms to describe my emerging identity, whatever it was going to be. But I needed some fresh euphemisms, some newly-minted memes, to move me forward.  No “life at the crossroads.” No “golden years.”  No “more time with the grandchildren” (don’t have any).  No “exploring other opportunities.”  No “long walks on the beach.”
Above all, no “consulting.”
Choose your own retirement euphemisms carefully to reflect your unique set of interests and qualifications.  Be aware that the labels you choose for your new retirement identity may actually frame and define the direction you take with your life.  They become your “brand,” as we’re now supposed to say. What could you get away with calling yourself, at least in jest, without risking criminal charges of perjury or fraud?
Everyone’s list of creative euphemisms will be different, of course, depending on our varying backgrounds, skills and interests. Here is an array of post-retirement identities that I could hypothetically lay claim to without undue dishonesty. I’m still deciding which of these to be.
So what are you doing these days?
Oh, I’m a freelance sociologist, or social-science fiction writer, or editor, or reader, or blogger.  I write mainly about politics and the human comedy.
 Or I’m an urban anthropologist or ethnographer or participant-observer, out in the field in Houston.
Or  I’m  a social or cultural  or media or corporate  or advertising critic.
Or I’m on an independent scholar, or postscholar.
Or I’m a columnist, or a correspondent, or a cultural reporter, or a mild-mannered satirist on the daily planet.
This is my not-a-retirement.  If you need some fresh euphemisms to describe your own not-a-retirement, tailor-made to your unique background and interests, get in touch.  I do some identity coaching on the side as a creative retirement consultant.  I design later-life narratives.  I’m what you might call a biographical reinventor.

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dysphemisms for retirement, euphemisms for retirement, retirement shame, empty nest, two academician marriages, your hidden message here, retirement, comedy, humor, creative euphemisms, freelance sociologist, fresh euphemisms, fresh memes, blog, daniel rigney, danagram, post-scholar, exploring other opportunities, human comedy, advertising, media, politics, retirement consultant, later-life narratives, identity coach, biographical reinventor, daily planet, mild-mannered satirist, satirist, participant-observation, houston, urban ethnographer, urban anthropologist, brand, freelance blogger, freelance reader, freelance writer, social science fiction, sociologist

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Taste Test (Word Cloud)

By Daniel Rigney and wordle.com

This is a test. This is only a test. I'm testing a program called Wordle that allows us all to make homemade word clouds (or cloud poems) and share them with friends. I've been living in a cloud of words all my life, and I quite enjoy it, but that's another story.




 

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