As I was reading Thomas Friedman’s commentary this morning I got to thinking about how almost everything he was saying pointed to sources of intellectual disaffection.  And by intellectual disaffection I mean the pro-physical education predilection of Americans who despise school and spend endless energy on boosterism by gathering in huge numbers to shout themselves hoarse, not necessarily for brilliant battering of armored combatants but so that their “team” will win.

One of the most important sources of downgrading the importance of intellect and superior intelligent in the kids with glasses and books in their hands is belief. My morality is superior to your reasoned questions. You cannot argue with me because I am right – the Bible tells me so.  Or, if you cannot find the right passage to quote, you can say – my Pastor told me so.  I think the old fashioned Protestant insistence on learning how to read so you could make up your own mind was one source of intellectual superiority in the morass of medieval superstition where their witches, warlocks and Satan trumped your books and new ideas; and, anyway, fire consumed all.

A second source of intellectual disaffection almost as great as belief is the comfort of being surrounded by the familiar.  I cannot remember any kid who, being brought up in the midst of the Newark Ghetto who thought he was deprived until someone pointed it out to him.  Even then, he remembered the old homestead with fondness and thought of the good old days when he had friends and family despite the fact that they lived in squalor – that, too, was pointed out much later. We grow up knowing a reality that defies the intellectual protest and you are deprived because it is the norm and that norm is comfort and safety.

A third source of intellectual disaffection is its dismissal in favor of things like justice (whose?) and getting even for all the past hurts and humiliations that simply must be erased by mindless war and satisfaction in hurting an enemy that rational thought would demolish.  So, demolish rational thought and leave it out of the picture of shooting, killing, beheadings and refusal to sit down and talk.

There are many more sources of disaffection caused by those who insist on being of an intellectual persuasion. They irritate those who cannot think in the same way and about the same things.  While the intellectual points to war and says it must be a bad thing because people die the anti-intellectual points out that people die anyway for death is at the end of life and, so what?  He is smug on this one and has you.  You cannot answer the truth of this observation. You can fume and sputter but he won’t listen to you.  He has spoken.