Intellectuals and Society

Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thomas Sowell goes against the general trend of ideas promoted by today's society in this book and I appreciate that quite a lot. There is, indeed, a general fear (that he actually consistently criticizes) of attacking certain ideas that means that most of the intellectuals of today (as he very well points out) are actually, with different words, promoting the same trends and ideas. It takes guts to go against the trend and I like it.

Generally speaking, the themes of this book revolve around the fact that intellectuals are people who speak without practical experience which means that in most cases, no matter how smart they are, they do not really know what they are talking about. But because they sound like they know what they are saying, they are influential in creating policies that in the end hurt the very people they are claiming to defend. I tend to agree with this idea. I also agree that in many cases the lack of arguments for ideas is replaced by a direct attack on people who disagree with those ideas, which has the tendency to take the focus from the idea in itself and move it to the person. This is done a lot nowadays, especially in politics - where the actual skills of the politicians are ignored in the election process, in favour of an image of a perfect family man and great guy, despite the fact that most of the good rulers in history were nothing close to that image.

Other ideas he is behind, that I generally agree with:
- Economy works best with the least amount of government control
- Positive discrimination, rather than ending discrimination, perpetuates the differences between categories of people and ends up causing more discrimination - which is an even stronger thing to say when the author himself is black
- In most of the cases, a welfare state leads to people being less motivated to work out of their bad situation, which perpetuates, not diminishes, poverty

I like where he's going with the book and I agree with it in most of the cases. What I like less is the fact that, as much as he is criticizing intellectuals, Thomas Sowell can't help but be an intellectual himself and falls into the same trap that he criticizes others for falling into: he speaks about actual people with a very detached tone. For him society is a theory, not an actual mixture of people. I cannot otherwise interpret his idea that we cannot complain about society being unfair when children are born in bad circumstances any less than we can complain about them being born stupid. That the accident of your birth is what it is, and we all should simply make the best of it no matter what. That the society should accept this and move on without trying to improve the chances of children at birth.

In the context of the above-described ideas, I can understand where he's coming from, but this is a theory that only works in the Western world. Yes, in the United States, if you work hard enough, you have a good chance to make it, even if you start in a trailer. It will probably make you a stronger human being for it too. But even I, who was born in a country poorer than the United States, into a less organized and less fair society, cannot possibly afford to go look an African child in the eye and say "oh well, you've got an almost zero chance from birth to make a great life for yourself, unless you're some genius, unlucky you. Lucky me, I was born in a place where I actually stood a chance".

Yes, intellectuals go about it the wrong way and it's OK to point that out. What is not OK is to just say that people who were born in absolutely miserable circumstances were born so because "life is not fair" and leave it at that. Yes, a man who had his chance and blew it will probably be better off left alone so that he can get motivated to try again. But it's very cynical to apply this to a two year-old starving African child. It is normal and we should continue to try to increase the chances they have in life to begin with. Probably in a different way that we have so far, but we should still try it.

He also suggests that a society functions better when policemen/women function with less restrictions. I think this contrasts to the general idea of the book - which tends to promote that the society governs itself better than governments or intellectuals could ever think to do. In this case, he suggests that after imposing restrictions on the policemen in the sixties, the crime rates went up - and he makes a direct correlation between the two. I cannot say I studied the figures enough to know if that is true or false, but what I can say is that in order to have unrestricted (or let's say, less restricted) policemen/women you have to have 100% trust that they will not use their power in the wrong way. Authority in the hands of the wrong person can lead to tragic consequences for a lot of people - which is why the restrictions were placed there in the first place. We all know that there was a time when the lord of the manor did not have any restrictions on how he treated his peasants - and we have lots of stories of how bad lords used that.

The system that works is a system that takes into consideration that its people are flawed and builds up rules that take that into account and control the people's flaws so that they don't affect the system. This is why we have restrictions and laws for every position of authority. Yes, these rules will at many times prevent a great policeman from doing many things that would have probably been good. Yes, it is faster to arrest a man if you don't have any proof - but if we don't have any proof, how do we know we arrested the right person? Yes, for a good policeman it's restrictive to have to get a warrant to search a man's house (which wastes time, which may mean the bad guy escapes) but this procedure is meant to prevent a bad policeman from breaking into your house without a reason. The whole reason why we moved on from feudalism was to evolve from a system where the society worked as well as the few people who had all the authority. Prove to me without a doubt that there are no bad policemen out there and there never will be one again and I will agree to a state where policemen will no longer require warrants.

I could nitpick the book and find many other flaws with it. There are some ideas that just pop up from time to time but are not afterwards repeated and for such a large book, it would take another large book to comment on every idea mentioned here. Some I agree with, some I don't.

My advice: read it for the general ideas, but make your own mind about the specifics. He's got a good general point there, but not everything in the book is as good as the idea behind it.

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