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    About Knowledge, Intellect, and Critical Thinking

    Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

    About Knowledge, Intellect, and Critical Thinking
     

    I was just sitting here thinking about my good friend, Playthell Benjamin. While I’m a firm believer in becoming one’s own hero, I really admire this guy, almost to the point of jealousy. I think he’s one of the great, and most under-recognized, writers and historians of our time (if you’re not familiar with him, look him up on Google). The reason I enjoy reading Playthell is because his writings always contain a wealth of information. That’s his brilliance. Regardless to what the subject is, he’s a literal reservoir of information, and I’ve undoubtedly become a better writer as a result of reading him. Reading his writings have taught me to scrupulously avoid superficiality, and to look beneath the carpet of my subject matter to drive my points home.
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    But we have a fundamental difference in the way we view the White academic establishment. He’s in awe of it (after all, it produced him), while I have a very critical view of contemporary academia, especially with respect to Black intellectual development. That’s one of two subjects that we never miss an opportunity to fight over. The other is the impact of sports on the Black community.
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    Like most Black intellectuals, Playthell fully embraces the White academic establishment and considers being anointed by it what it means to be truly educated. I don’t. While I understand, and respect, what the White academic establishment has achieved in the physical sciences, I find it to be hugely flawed in what I consider the "Speculative Arts" - history, philosophy, politics, economics, and such. What it tends to produce is a bunch of establishment-serving clones. While the knowledge is definitely there - and every Black person alive should leave no stone unturned to avail themselves of it - it should be consumed with two boxes of salt, because it tends to be skewed toward promoting the prevailing interest of the establishment.
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    Thus, we cannot trust the academic establishment to tell us who’s "brilliant," because the people who it anoints as brilliant are those who tend to embrace the establishment’s mindset. While these people often have opposing views on any group of facts, they all tend to base their thinking on the same philosophical assumptions. For example, the assumption that the White establishment’s water is wetter than everyone else’s.
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    For that reason, I firmly believe that Black people should establish their own intellectual traditions, and we should put brutally critical thinking at the very root of that tradition. We should critically scrutinize EVERY fact that we’re exposed to before we accept it as a part of our data base, and any "fact" that doesn’t stand up to logical scrutiny should be unceremoniously discarded, and that's regardless to whether it makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside or not. 
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    For example, we shouldn’t accept the contention that Dr. Brainchild is a brilliant man simply because he taught at Harvard. We should ALWAYS listen to what Dr. Brainchild has to say, and make the determination on whether he’s brilliant or not for OURSELVES. And we should never assume that if he doesn’t seem to make sense, or if he speaks in convoluted sentences that cause us to forget the subject matter before he gets to a period, that we simply don’t understand him due to our lack of intellect or education. If we fail to do that, we’re allowing the establishment to tell us who to listen to, and that allows us to be played. We should never give anyone else's ability to think priority over our own.  Both the GOP, and Fox News', very existence is based on people's willingness to allow others to think for them, and we're all paying a huge price for it. So if Dr. Brainchild is indeed as brilliant as the establishment claims he is, he should be able to communicate clearly, logically, and on a level that anyone can understand. If he can't, we should immediately write him off as just another academic lip flapper living on dubious credentials - and there are plenty of them out there.
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    Black people, and Americans in general, need to understand that knowledge, wisdom, and intelligence are very different things from merely obtaining a degree. Malcolm didn’t even go to college; he got his education in jail, but who do you think was the more profound thinker, Malcolm X, or Cornel West?
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    While I’m a great proponent of formal education, we must never forget that knowledge started with individual and independent thought, and only then, were educational institutions established to disseminate that thought. Thus, we don’t get knowledge, wisdom, and intellect from institutions - they get it from us. So we should never assume that because an individual has a "receipt" from Harvard that his thinking is any more profound than our own. After all, George W. Bush has a receipt from Yale.

    RELATED MATERIAL

    BLACK AMERICA: BLACK AMERICA: OUR HISTORY LIES BEFORE US
    http://wattree.blogspot.com/2008/12/black-america-our-history-lies-before_31.html

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    Eric L. Wattree
    http://wattree.blogspot.com/
    [email protected]
    Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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    Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

    Comments

    I am sorry cause my PC crashed again. Here we go again.

    You make so many points but all I can do is look at so many, many issues within this perspective.

    Now the Left will point to the opinions of 'climatologists' regarding climate change (we used to say global warming) and the right will point to the opinions of 'meteorologists' to thwart those claims. (Although the repubs are so busy sucking the oil corporate pricks that I question their 'findings'! ha

    I still think that the Left would do better just labeling the entire matter as pollution (since millions of Chinese cannot even breath; as if Californians have no problems breathing!)

    Can we really drink the water and breathe the air?

    George W. Bush attended Yale & Harvard through elitist affirmative action, but the Right will claim that My President  only got to Harvard per affirmative action.

    Hell I can find 'experts' who claim that Lincoln hated all Blacks or that Lincoln was bisexual or that Lincoln hated abolitionists or that....

    I can go to an MD with a list of problems and that doctor will ignore all I say because I have a list (this is the truth which is why I have not seen a doctor in two years).

    Experts told us that going into Iraq would be easy and take a couple months to complete.

    Experts told us in 1929 and 2008 that the 'system' would take care of itself.

    Experts told us that Obama would lead us into permanent unemployment over 9% and that Obama is responsible for the decrease in assets/income of the middle class and the destruction of the Dow Jones Industrials.

    And most of these experts had degrees from Yale and Harvard and Princeton and...

    I watched a fun youtube video recounting a panel of 'experts' with Patton Oswalt

    introducing experts like Hitchens (a man I hated and loved at the same time)

     

    Just in case this did not work.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhcwX-4R_CMase this did not work

    I might come back, but this is where I crashed the last time


    Richard,

    That is exactly my point.
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    My friend responded by saying.

    FACT CHECK: I am neither a "product of the white Academic establishment" nor "in awe" of them. The truth is that I am one of the FOUNDERS OF A DISCIPLINE. And since i am an AUTODIDACT with no degrees - like Frederick Douglass, Harold Cruse, CLR James, et al -YOU ARE MORE OF A PRODUCT OF THE WHITE ACADEMIC ESTABLISHMENT THAN I AM!!!!!! You just were not as succesful in influencing it as me!

    What I am is a realist who understands the folly of trying to dismiss a system of learning that enabled Europeans to take over the world, enslave our ancestors for centuries, invent the atomic bomb, organize the Marine Corprs, that you served in proudly, and land on the moon!!! So don't get it twisted!!!! Anyone who is interested in my actual attitude and experience in acdemia should read the following essay by Professor MichaelThelwell, who actually knows what he is talking about at: https://commentariesonthetimes.wordpress.com/.../dr.../

    Furthermore, if you actually read Frederick Douglass, Cruse, James, Richard Wright, or ANY SERIOUS BLACK INTELLECTUAL WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO OUR ADVANCEMENT AS A RACE YOU WILL FIND THAT THEY HOLD THIS BODY OF KNOWLWGE IN THE SAME HIGH REGARD AS I DO!!!!!!!!!! It is ironic that the things that you claim to admire about me is PRECISELY BECAUSE OF MY STUDY IN THIS BODY OF KNOWLEGE!!!! So you are talking out of both side of your mouth Eric and one side is contradicting the other!!!!!!!!

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    Playthell,

    I'm sorry to here about your eyes, brother. But it's clear that you haven't had the time to review the piece, because you're making some erroneous assumptions in your response. I never said that I didn't respect the achievements of the academic community. In fact, I went out of my way to point out that I did. My point was, we shouldn't be so in awe of its anointments that we give it priority over our own ability to think.

    Yes, going to the Moon was a great achievement, and I acknowledged the academy's great advancements in the physical sciences. But what I was addressing was it's flaws when it comes to the "Speculative Arts," the pure ability to think, and ironically, you make my point in your response.

    It's one thing to be able to apply established knowledge to go to the Moon, or to regurgitate the thoughts of dead White men, and yet another to be able to absorb knowledge and use it in new and creative ways to create something all together new, or to educate one's self to the extent that you turn yourself into a totally unique individual with a unique way of manipulating established knowledge that you've never been formally instructed in. That's intelligence, and that's what people like Bird, Monk, Trane, and Frederick Douglass did - and your response indicate that's what you did. So you've made my point - that we should NEVER give anyone else's ability to think priority over our own, whether they've been anointed by the system or not.

    As for my not being successfully recognized by the system, that's not one of my goals. This may sound big-headed, but I'm not interested in being recognize, or anointed, by the system; my primary goal is to leave at least one thought behind that will be of benefit to posterity. That's what life is about, not striving to become anointed by one's contemporaries.

    Who were the superstars of academy during the time of Socrates? Most people can't say without doing research, but they do recognize the name of Socrates, and he was considered merely another hood rat during his time. So it's not academic stardom that we should seek, we should seek a standard of excellence that will endure over time. That's been my goal every since I was a child.

    When I was 13 years old, and agonizing through detention at school, I stumbled across a book by Ralph Waldo Emerson. He reached across time and culture to relate to my young mind, and he's hugely responsible for what I'm doing this very moment. He said, "It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion, and it is easy in solitude to live after one's own; but great is the man who,  in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness, the independence of solitude."

    That's what I always seek to do, and that was the sentiment reflected in the piece above. My dreams are much bigger than trying to become a contemporary superstar. I routinely turn down any invitation to appear in the media - my woman and I fight over that ALL the time; she wants me to live in the here and now. But I’m a romantic, and an uppity hood rat. So my dream is to show posterity what it means to be a hood rat. I want to reach across time and help eyes that are yet unborn to see my time, through my eyes. And thanks to the flawless memory of the internet, I think I can do just that.


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