By Simon Hukin:

There has been no quest in my life greater than that for knowledge. The drive to learn, to understand the worlds of man and nature, is a need – deep and visceral. To love learning – to prize it in all of its forms –  and to embrace truth is to be an intellectual. However, intellectualism these days is a rare and largely loathed commodity. The word intellectual is denigrated throughout the English speaking world – the thinker is perceived as either useless, armchair warrior; unintelligible, lab-coated scientific type; or Chardonnay-swilling, artsy-fartsy, psuedo-socialist.

The triumph of this attitude is epitomised by the treatment meted out to our sporting ‘heroes’. These single-skilled, largely monosyllabic goons attract slavering worship from their legions of dedicated fans, yet they prove themselves, time and again, both unworthy and idiotic. Consider the case of Matthew Johns. Mere months after the outing of his participation in the notorious sordid, salacious and likely non-consensual New Zealand sex scandal he has been lionised through the gift of his own high-rating television series. Or, perhaps, consider the triumphant return of the drug-addled Ben Cousins to AFL stardom. Not only do these vapid and anti-social individuals find themselves largely immune to criticism (the mud rarely sticks, and when it does it’s not for long), they are often rewarded for their vile, “laddish” acts.

A further example of the nadir of the intellectual comes with the rise of Tony Abbott. In order to take his place as Leader of the Liberal Party he unhorsed Malcolm Turnbull – undoubtedly the most intelligent Liberal leader in twenty years – who was immolated before ever getting to an election because he was prepared to face up to a tough issue which didn’t sit nicely with his party’s politics: climate change. Abbott himself is motivated by faith – in God, in the existing state of affairs, and in family values. He is often irrational and does not take well to intellectualism or challenges to his beliefs. Furthermore, those foundations are very rarely challenged in and of themselves.

Continuing our Parliamentary trek we discover two characters who have been elected without issue numerous times; one in the House, the other in the Senate – Wilson Tuckey and Barnaby Joyce. Both have happily seized the mantle ‘ordinary bloke’ – adopting characteristic ockerism and demonstrating intentional vacuity at every turn. For instance, in a Senate Committee inquiry into the abortion drug RU486  Senator Joyce declared while interrogating Rosyln Dundas of the Women’s Electoral Lobby:

“So, if I shoot a woman in the abdomen and do not kill her, but kill the baby, I have not actually committed a crime?”

To which Dundas replied “No, you actually have committed a crime, by shooting the woman.”

Wilson Tuckey even makes an outright virtue of intellectual mediocrity claiming he believes his  “great asset is that a lot of the people think [he's] a fool.” He went so far as to say “it’s the best asset I’ve got.”

We in the Western world have grown inured to the ‘banal’ failings of our society and are, largely, content to live a life of slavish materialism, which breeds a dangerous apathy and  propensity for self-delusion. Consider the effects: the Right’s reaction to climate change; the continuation of theocracy; the proliferation of nuclear weaponry; and the cycle of economic crises. Those who challenge the lifestyle – who dare to ask why, and seek improvement; who have a powerful drive to think, create, and discover – are given odd looks when they speak. Those who prize truth are, somehow, aberrant.

Yet is it not supremely arrogant to be intentionally ignorant? To not care for learning, for others, for novelty, for beauty? Is it not a vile calumny to esteem mediocrity? To place complacency and ordinariness on a pedestal? If one realises they are ignorant – if they have a deficit in their knowledge, or a problem with their position, and they have this demonstrated to them -  intentionally remaining so is both narcissistic and foolish. Without the quest for knowledge and meaning as a primary motivating factor we become complacent, and there is no greater threat to contemporary society than complacency – apathy and ignorance bred deep in the bone; enculturated by materialism and a fetishistic obsession with comparative income.

It is time for the intellectual to reclaim the territory to which they are rightfully entitled. We need a rallying cry for reason; a call to arms – we must recapture the ground we have lost to the complacent, apathetic and the ignorant.  Furthermore, we must convince those who are unintentionally ignorant to embrace the pursuit of knowledge. The three pillars of any strategy to achieve this must be language, truth and logic – plain honest speech, transparent political doctrine, detestation for euphemism and falsification, and logical debate. These must be had in public debate, education, and life in general.

The only resources one requires to be worthy are the capacity to think logically, to communicate such thought, and to be intellectually honest at all times with oneself and others. If one has guts, one can shred dreadful arguments simply and wonderfully. One needn’t be of heroic stature. These qualities of intellectual heroism are available to ordinary people, they only need stop making excuses for themselves and for others. This is a challenging notion. It requires a commitment to truth – for people to adopt the line “I won’t tell any lies even if it suits me, or my cause” as personal dogma, examine their own positions and denude themselves of the comfortable untruths they tell themselves in order to maintain that comforting inner glow.

The job of the public intellectual is, or ought to be, to spread truth – most often to say ‘it’s more complicated than that’. Take, for instance, the recent case of health reform. The public was faced with an apparently exhaustive binary choice: either accept the Rudd government’s proposed National Hospital Network plan and achieve improvement in healthcare around Australia or do nothing an allow our hospitals to atrophy. Of course, the arguments surrounding the issues are far more complicated than that. The public intellectuals who weighed in on the debate spent a great deal of effort trying to highlight this – x in the field of mental health reform and primary care, y in terms of digital economy and e-health, and Dwyer in terms of local hospital management.

However, there are occasions when the intellectual must also do the reverse – to vehemently declare it is simple! Consider the fatwa placed on Salman Rushdie – one must, surely, say ‘you have to be on his side, there’s no other side one could possibly be on’. However, the debate is presently overcomplicated, with people dancing around the question on all sides. Almost nobody is prepared to speak frankly – to say with supreme confidence that the fatwa is wrong, abhorrent and absurd, and must seem so to all thinking people. The job of the intellectual – as undertaken, in this case, by Christopher Hitchens – is to cut through the guff and deliver the concise and decisive truth.

The notion of tolerance runs far too far. We have come to tolerate apathy, ignorance, intentional vacuity, and moral, intellectual and ethical cowardice. Presently any ignorant, callous, or gutless fool can say ‘well, it’s my opinion’ and the debate ends. We have come to tolerate, nay even accept, those opinions which are patently absurd, or cruel, or despicable simply because we have come to believe it is somehow the right of every individual to hold an unique opinion – no matter what it may be. I challenge this. If an opinion is incorrect, serves to perpetuate cruelty, or may lead to unnecessary suffering it ought to be dismantled. Ignorance is not a virtue. Faith is no justification. Delusion is intolerable.

This attitude may be seen as elitist. I assure you, it is not. If anything, it’s the opposite. This is not an attack on the unintelligent – one has little choice in the development of one’s brain – rather it is a criticism of those who keep themselves in a state of unnecessary ignorance; refusing to learn; denying logic and decrying the value of debate. It is also an exhortation to all who are not yet intellectuals to become so – to adopt the quest for knowledge and the propagation of truth. After all, the great virtue of extraordinary men is the power of facing unpleasant facts – the refusal of the lie. They are possessed of the desire to know, the capacity to accept, and the mind enough to change. They needn’t have the best of brain, simply the visceral need to understand and willpower enough to grasp the truth and make it their own. These are the things which define true greatness.

Simon Hukin is a student at the Australian National University, General Secretary of the Western Australian Secondary Students’ Association, peripatetic music teacher and general curmudgeon. He is heavily involved in politics and the union movement.

Tags: Barnaby Joyce, intellectualism in australia, learning in australia, Simon Hukin, sporting heroes, wilson tuckey