High priests of intellectualism

In two different books I've been reading recently, I've found the same unpleasant idea turning up. 

From Paul Johnson's Intellectuals, page 199

[Bertrand Russell] wrote: 'I like mathematics because it is not human.' In his essay, 'The Study of Mathematics', he rejoiced: 'Mathematics possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, sublimely pure and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.' 

Russell never believed that the populace could or should be encouraged to penetrate the frontiers of knowledge. His professional work in mathematics was carried out in a highly technical manner, making not the smallest concession to the non-specialist. Philosophical speculations, he argued, should be conducted in a special language and he fought not only to retain but to strengthen this hieratic code. He was a high priest of the intellect, forbidding outsiders to penetrate the arcana. He disagreed strongly with those of his philosophical colleagues, like G.E. Moore, who wanted to debate problems in ordinary, commonsense language, insisting: 'common sense embodies the metaphysics of savages.'

From the Introduction to The Critic's Part: Wystan Curnow Art Writings 1971-2013. The Introduction is by one of the editors, Robert Leonard:

In [his essay] ‘High Culture’, Curnow complained that New Zealand’s cultural middlemen (its critics and commentators) dragged art down by seeking to reduce the distance between art and the public, when they should be seeking to increase that distance by generating the ‘psychic insulation’ that would enable artists to be ambitious, free of the restraints placed on them by an uninformed, unappreciative society. 

Johnson's book, Intellectuals, looks at a number of highly-regarded intellectuals who frequently placed themselves above the 'people'. They supposedly loved the 'people' as long as they were en masse. People who actually came into face to face contact with these intellectuals were usually treated with disdain, bruised, battered and thrown on the heap when no longer cared about. While Curnow doesn't appear to go quite that far, his insistence on artists distancing themselves from the public in order to do their work, is yet another example of this idea that certain people are above the run of the general populace. 

Incidentally, Russell did write for the mass, often. He wrote about a wide range of topics, many of which he hadn't the least idea about. And he would write with passion about something one year and claim he'd never done so some time later. 

A genius at your own level

The other day, Seth Godin wrote: If you're waiting for a boss or an editor or a college to tell you that you do good work, you're handing over too much power to someone who doesn't care nearly as much as you do.

We spend a lot of time organizing and then waiting for the system to pick us, approve of us and give us permission to do our work.

This somewhat ties in with something I've struggled with a good deal over the years: a kind of self-criticism that says what I do isn't good enough - because so and so does it so much better. The fact that so and so is some kind of genius has never impressed the self-critic in me. Because so and so is great/good/capable, I must therefore always be on a lower step on the rung.

It's nonsense of course, and what's worse it makes me criticise others, both those who really are better than me, and those who plainly aren't (though of course the critic doesn't let me say that without feeling guilty).

I realised the other day, after having discussed this at length with my supervisor on several occasions, that there really isn't some kind of magical 'bar' just out of reach that I'm always striving for....one that someone else has placed there. The only bar I need to worry about (if worry is the right word) is the bar I'm prepared to climb up to. If what I'm doing isn't good enough the bar is the one I set in place myself to make sure that what I do is good enough.

I need a bar, a kind of level to strive for. Otherwise, 'okay' is good enough - and of course it isn't; it's usually second-rate. But the other side of this is that when I do do well, or write something that's good, then that sets the standard for future work, and also satisfies the inner critic.

Furthermore, as Godin says, I don't need 'permission' from someone else, approval that says what I've done is good. Of course we all like to hear that other people appreciate what we create - equally we don't like to hear other people saying they don't like what we've done. However, reliance on that approval (or disapproval) is, in the end, counterproductive. It tells us nothing except that someone liked or disliked something.

The person who needs to like or dislike it is the creator of it. Ultimately I'm the judge of the work. If I think I've done my utmost with it, then that's the place to sit and be satisfied. If I realise that I can improve it (see the previous post) then I need to knuckle down and improve it. Until it's at that 'level,' that 'bar' I was talking about, it will make me feel dissatisfied.

But at least that dissatisfaction is within my own sphere, not 'created' by some false sense that someone else would/could do better, and that I'm a fraud to pretend I can do as well.

On an entirely different note, because different notes give variety, and monotonal music/writing is a bore, I have just discovered what pop displays are. I thought they must be something to do with pop-outs. Nope. The 'pop' stands for 'point of purchase' - that's not what we call them here in NZ where the term is more often 'point of sale display' - and it means all those little things you (or worse, your kids) can pick up at the last minute and throw into the bunch of stuff you've just spent an hour buying around the supermarket, or Bunnings, or The Warehouse, or wherever.

Bunnings opened its new store in Dunedin a few days ago - tonight they had about five minutes of full-scale fireworks blazing throughout the night sky, the second such display in a few weeks - the last was for the last match at Carisbrook, the famed sports ground that has been dumped in favour of the new Stadium Dunedin is building at enormous cost to the ratepayers - even though initially we were told it wouldn't cost us a thing! That ridiculously long sentence, with its muddled syntax and cluttered phrases is a prime example of something that should be fixed up (my inner critic is doing a poor imitation of weeping), but since the bar for this paragraph is just where I'm sitting already, I'm not going to do anything more about it!

[Picture of Mozart - a genius - for those who didn't recognise him.]

Who is Fred Blanks?

I mentioned Fred Blanks a couple of posts ago, which made me curious to know who he is/was.

He's an 83-year-old who lives in Sydney. He's a retired scientist with an Honours degree from the University of Sydney, specialising in organic chemistry research and management. But he's also a major music critic and adult education lecturer - a profession that began as a hobby. English is not his first language, in spite of his English-sounding name; he came to Australia as an immigrant.

He's obviously very involved in the music scene in Australia; check him out on Google and you'll only find references to music, not to science.

But there doesn't seem to be any readily available bio of him. Maybe one will turn up somewhere when I'm not looking.