Chapter 9 Chapter 8: The Role of Intellectuals and Scientists

This book demonstrates that the integrity of internal communication channels is an indispensable condition of social welfare.This intercommunication not only now frequently encounters threats that have existed since ancient times, but also regularly encounters certain new problems of special seriousness which are peculiar to our time.One of these problems is the increasing complexity and cost of communication. A hundred and fifty years ago, or even fifty years ago--this is irrelevant--the world, and America in particular, was full of small newspapers and publications from which almost anyone could use them as a pulpit.At that time, the local editor was not limited, as he is now, to the reporting of stereotyped sermons and local gossip, but could express, and often expressed, his own opinion; of various problems.

Now, with the increasing cost of printing, paper and syndication, this freedom of self-expression has become such a luxury that journalism has finally become a valuable art. Movies may be the cheapest in terms of cost per audience per viewing, but collectively they are so prohibitively expensive that few movies are worth the risk unless their success is It was confirmed in advance.The studio's concern is not whether a film will appeal to a large audience but how it will not displease the few that it can count on to deliver unimpeded sales to movie theaters. What I have said above about newspapers and movies applies equally to radio and television, and even to book sales.We are thus living in an age in which the enormous per-person traffic conflicts with the ever-shrinking total traffic.More and more we have to accept those standardized, innocuous and contentless products, just like the white bread of Bread Yi, it is not so much baked for edible value as it is for convenience. Baked for preservation and sale.

This situation is basically an external disadvantage of modern communication, but there is also a disadvantage that corrodes it from the inside.This handicap is a cancer that limits and diminishes creativity. In the past, young people who were willing to dedicate themselves to artistic creation could either immerse themselves in creation directly, or prepare themselves through general school education. This kind of education may have nothing to do with the major he finally assumed, but at least he A rigorous exercise of the various faculties and tastes.Now, the way of learning is greatly blocked.Our primary and secondary schools place more emphasis on formal classroom instruction than on the intellectual exercise of actually learning something; they push to the junior colleges much of the hard preparation required for a course in science or literature. went.

At the same time, Hollywood has also discovered that the standardization of its products is an obstacle for talented actors to express their acting skills naturally on the stage of drama.The theaters that were constantly changing scripts have almost all gone out of business, and some of them have become training schools for Hollywood acting, but even this part of the theater is slowly withering and dying.Our young, self-proclaimed actors are professionally trained to a considerable degree, but it's not learned on stage, it's learned in college acting classes.It is very difficult for our young writers to keep up with syndicated work, and if their first attempt fails, they will have nowhere to go but go to the universities, where they are said to be taught how to write.Thus the higher degrees, and above all the Doctor of Philosophy, which has always been the basis of the activity of the scientific specialist, have become more and more the model of intellectual training in all fields.

In truth, artists, writers, and scientists should be motivated by an irresistible compulsion to pay for the opportunity to do their work, even if they are not paid for it.However, we are in an era when the form of education is largely crowding out the content of education, and we are in an era when the content of education is becoming increasingly weak.People are now pursuing higher degrees and pursuing what might be considered a cultural career, perhaps more with social fame than with any deep creative urge. Considering that there are such a large number of half-bottles of vinegar supplying the market, it has become a matter of urgency to find them for research on seemingly high-sounding subjects.Logically speaking, they should find their own subject matter, but modern higher education, a huge enterprise, cannot help them do this in such an undemanding atmosphere.Thus creative work, whether in art or science, which at first should have been governed by the great desire to create something new and make it known to the world, is instead pursued by the pursuit of a Ph.D. dissertation or something similar. The need for formality is replaced by the apprenticeship of the method.

Some of my friends have even asserted that a PhD dissertation should be one of the greatest works a person has done or will eventually do in his research work, and that this work should wait until he can fully explain his life's work. write it.I disagree with this view.I just think that even if the dissertation is not such a difficult job in fact, it should at least be consciously regarded as a gateway to active creation.God knows how many problems to solve, how many books to write and how much music to compose; There are very few exceptions, and nine out of ten there is no reason to do it.If a young man seeks fame as a novelist rather than having something to say, the first novel he writes is disgusting; and we can't stand mathematical treatises that are correct and elegant but have no flesh or soul .We especially can't bear the kind of gentlemanly airs, because it not only opens up the existence possibility of such poor and sloppy work, but also adopts a cowardly arrogance, openly against the energy and thought that may appear at any time and anywhere. aspects of the competition.

In other words, when there is communication that does not require communication, that exists only to enable someone to achieve the social and intellectual prestige of a communication evangelist, then the quality of the message and its communication value are as straight as a hammer down.This is like a film according to R.Like the machines built on the views of Rube Goldberg, it is merely to demonstrate that purposes which we do not wish to achieve can be represented by a machine which is manifestly utterly unfit for them. No other use.In art, the desire to pursue new things and to find new ways of expressing them is the source of all life and pleasure.However, we come across instances every day, for example, in painting, of painters who have always fastened themselves to the new methods of abstract art, and seem to have no intention of using these new methods to express interesting and new formal beauty, and have no intention of using them. These new devices fought an uphill battle against vulgar and banal tendencies.Not all conformists in art are scholastic artists.Conformists also have their ancestors.No school of thought can monopolize beauty.Beauty, like order, arises in many places in this world, but it is only a partial and temporary battle against an entropic Niagara.

I say this here with a stronger emotion, and I am more excited for us artists in science than for artists in general, because what I want to say above all is what exists in science. The problem.Our colleges favor imitation as opposed to originality, vulgarity, superficiality, mass reproduction to new strength, unhelpful precision, short-sightedness, and limitation of method rather than ubiquity and ubiquity. The novelty and the beauty of the novel - both of which sometimes irritate me, and often disappoint and sadden me.Beyond that, I insist: we must oppose not only the slaughter of intellectual originality in the modern world (as I have done) due to the difficulties of the means of communication, but also the That's the ax to get rid of, because the people who choose communication as their entry point are often the same people who know nothing but communication.