Anti-intellectualism has been on the rise since World War I. It's not about to stop any time soon without some seriously large-scale event. Prior to WWI everyone figured science and reason were purely good. WWI showed them this was not the case, as it created mustard gas, tanks, etc. That sort of cracked the social conception a bit.
The concentration camps and the Holocaust after World War II burst that crack wide open. Eugenics was held up as a purely rational approach to improving human life, remember. So it's failure was seen as a failure of rationalism and science (it actually wasn't, people were just cutting corners and over-extending their observations in invalid ways). The 20th century continued on like this, people cutting corners and slacking off on scientific rigor, it causing widespread suffering, then that suffering being laid at the feet of science for not stopping it. Thalidomide, leaded gasoline, lead paint, Agent Orange, atomic weapons, failure of centrally planned governance, the list goes on.
Somewhere along the way, the discussion ended. Reason and science lost. It was long enough ago that everything we produce today is produced from a fundamental place that begins with an opposition to intellectualism and proceeds from there. Just try to find a TV show or movie or other creative work that doesn't have anti-intellectualism already accepted as being as evidently true as gravity. You won't be able to do it, at least not in terms of Western media. I've seen a couple movies from India, strangely enough, that actually beg a discussion about it, but it comes across as very strange to a western mind.
Scientists and those who pursue reason are cold, detached, calculating, uncaring, socially awkward, arrogant, etc. They're not what you want your children to grow up to be. So they're certainly not who you want making decisions that govern how you live, what your taxes are spent on, etc. Even our most "science positive" media, science fiction, is nothing but a cavalcade of purportedly reason-driven characters leading people into danger through their hubris, only to be saved at the last moment by a gun-toting musclebound hero who tells the scientist to shut up and 'follows his heart.' That is the core of lay anti-intellectualism. If you want to have friends, a loving family, be connected to your community, be a caring, moral person... you can't guide your life with reason and science. That's the foundational principle. There is some incorrect supposition that love is irrational, that being kind is irrational, that science can't convey value to social utility alongside other types of utility, etc.
The way I see it, this is the biggest problem facing the human species. And it might not even have a solution. It might be a flaw in the idea of civilization. You create a civilization to remove danger from peoples lives. Danger which created the impetus and desperation great enough to abandon intuition and trust reason in the first place. So by civilizing, you guarantee those protected by its umbrella will come to devalue it and distrust it. They will fail to maintain and expand it. Once it begins to fall, most would think there might be reconsideration. I disagree. I think it will simply accelerate the fall. Seeing danger re-assert itself, the response will be to double-down on intuition, that it is the remaining pieces of infrastructure that endanger them and that they haven't gone far enough. Eventually, we revert to the 'default state' of humanity - slogging through the mud, racked with disease, bludgeoning each other to death over whose god is stronger.
The concentration camps and the Holocaust after World War II burst that crack wide open. Eugenics was held up as a purely rational approach to improving human life, remember. So it's failure was seen as a failure of rationalism and science (it actually wasn't, people were just cutting corners and over-extending their observations in invalid ways). The 20th century continued on like this, people cutting corners and slacking off on scientific rigor, it causing widespread suffering, then that suffering being laid at the feet of science for not stopping it. Thalidomide, leaded gasoline, lead paint, Agent Orange, atomic weapons, failure of centrally planned governance, the list goes on.
Somewhere along the way, the discussion ended. Reason and science lost. It was long enough ago that everything we produce today is produced from a fundamental place that begins with an opposition to intellectualism and proceeds from there. Just try to find a TV show or movie or other creative work that doesn't have anti-intellectualism already accepted as being as evidently true as gravity. You won't be able to do it, at least not in terms of Western media. I've seen a couple movies from India, strangely enough, that actually beg a discussion about it, but it comes across as very strange to a western mind.
Scientists and those who pursue reason are cold, detached, calculating, uncaring, socially awkward, arrogant, etc. They're not what you want your children to grow up to be. So they're certainly not who you want making decisions that govern how you live, what your taxes are spent on, etc. Even our most "science positive" media, science fiction, is nothing but a cavalcade of purportedly reason-driven characters leading people into danger through their hubris, only to be saved at the last moment by a gun-toting musclebound hero who tells the scientist to shut up and 'follows his heart.' That is the core of lay anti-intellectualism. If you want to have friends, a loving family, be connected to your community, be a caring, moral person... you can't guide your life with reason and science. That's the foundational principle. There is some incorrect supposition that love is irrational, that being kind is irrational, that science can't convey value to social utility alongside other types of utility, etc.
The way I see it, this is the biggest problem facing the human species. And it might not even have a solution. It might be a flaw in the idea of civilization. You create a civilization to remove danger from peoples lives. Danger which created the impetus and desperation great enough to abandon intuition and trust reason in the first place. So by civilizing, you guarantee those protected by its umbrella will come to devalue it and distrust it. They will fail to maintain and expand it. Once it begins to fall, most would think there might be reconsideration. I disagree. I think it will simply accelerate the fall. Seeing danger re-assert itself, the response will be to double-down on intuition, that it is the remaining pieces of infrastructure that endanger them and that they haven't gone far enough. Eventually, we revert to the 'default state' of humanity - slogging through the mud, racked with disease, bludgeoning each other to death over whose god is stronger.