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Saturday, January 24, 2004
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Evil Genius
Charles King, a political science professor at Georgetown University, has written an essay - “Battling the Six Evil Geniuses of Essay Writing” - in which, under Number Six, he captures rather beautifully the way many English professors have taught their students to think and write: "6. The Knee-Jerk Nihilist The Knee-Jerk Nihilist is the most sophisticated, most dangerous, and most evil of the Geniuses. He has probably taken an introductory course in literary theory, quantum physics, or postmodernism, but has forgotten most of what he learned. The one thing he took away from these courses, though, was a fundamental conviction that the world around us is just too complicated and too contradictory for us to make any sense of it. He also believes that because all our judgments are clouded by our own prejudices, anyone's opinion is just as good as anyone else's. The Knee-Jerk Nihilist is often seen wearing black and reading Nietzsche. He is also fond of quotation marks. Question: What makes a political system democratic? Essay: Democracy is a relative concept. In fact, the concept of "concept" is also relative. Words mean whatever we want them to "mean," and this is especially true for "democracy." For some, it means "free" elections. For others, it means keeping your own thugs "in power" and keeping the enemy thugs "out of power." No one can ever give a coherent definition, because it always depends on the "context." And since the "context" is always shifting, the "concept" of "democracy" also shifts. . . . The Knee-Jerk Nihilist is smart. He has read a great deal and thought seriously about issues. He has become so disillusioned about the possibility of our arriving at any real understanding of the world, however, that he has mortgaged his powers of analysis for a modish slavery to intellectual skepticism. " |