Does the UK still have an 'intellectual class'?

[NormaSnorks]

Not sure if this is politics or society really, but I found myself thinking about this after a couple of social events.

I'm in my 50s and have a group of friends and when we meet I'd say we are are 'intellectually curious' - interested in the news, literature, the arts etc and happy discussing and debating things. We can have very different individual views on things, but we'll be respectful and remain friends at the end of the day. I find our discussions interesting, sometimes challenging and occasionally I change my view about something as a result.

But I don't see this kind of approach around me in other social groups, or in my adult children's friends, or even much in the media? It seems people are either unable or unwilling to discuss anything of substance and become deeply uncomfortable with disagreement?

Is it just a generational thing? Where and who are the young intellectuals?

I suspect the entrenchment of the British class system has a role to play here, and a suspicion of 'intellectuals'. In the UK, it hard to imagine being towed from a ditch by a father-and-son car repair team and them talking knowledgeably about Tiepolo, which happened on a trip to Italy once.

Not a Botox clinic and a beer festival!!!! The world has gone to hell in a handcart.

I've seen anti- intellectualism in some schools, where the more academic children have been mocked by the teachers for preferring to sit in a corner with a book rather than discuss the latest reality TV.
My DC ( 25-35) do now have friends and colleagues with whom they can discuss politics, philosophy etc but all of them struggled at school finding their tribe, and felt they had to dumb down to fit in. The internet has really helped in making a much wider social circle possible, and the ability to link to articles and ideas makes the world of ideas within reach of many more people.
But I am often surprised by the general ignorance of many of the young people I meet.

What you have described is just standard conversation in my circles. We are all 50+ and unless there is a bare minimum of this kind of interaction I just couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to bear it. I can become so intolerably bored with inane people/conversation.

I listen to my teens and they are very similar, love to debate. Intellectual curiosity is alive and well in my experience.

If you’re hanging out on MN you’re not an intellectual.

I've been on MN since it began, and what's funny is that in the early days it very much was home to a highly educated, middle class female audience, many of whom were in academia or civil service etc. Posts were longer, well-constructed and punctuated and there was lots of respectful debate!

I often think this OP, I definitely think with my in-laws in their 70s my DH and I can have these conversations. I find with my peers, often it can be driven by opinion and images on social media.

There is less wider reading and free-thinking. I do believe AI will make this worse.

Nevertheless I know my university friends and I have some interesting conversations. Although I’ve noticed there have been zero discussion of Gaza or Israel

Indeed it has!
And there are only so many times one can cope with reading
'Help! Can sumone do me some Shellac nails for tomo plz. Thx huns xx'
on the town Facebook page...

Yes same here. Isn’t it more to do with social groups and like minded people becoming friends?

The zero discussion on Gaza is something I noticed too. It is deeply unpleasant on both sides.

That's good to know. Perhaps I just need to move!

Intellectualism has always been viewed with suspicion in England. Why that is I don’t know.

Yes, but that’s not what the OP is asking. She’s asking if there’s still an ‘intellectual class’ in the UK, not whether there are pockets of intellectually curious and or/well-informed people, which of course there are.

I assume she means something more like ‘intelligentsia’ as defined by Weber or Bourdieu, or Richard Flacks’ definition as those people within a society who produce, disseminate, critique, or interpret that society’s cultural values.

I used to live in Cambridge and there was no shortage of them there…..

I think it is, but I feel as if the groups of like-minded people aren't being replenished with the younger age-groups.

Thank you - yes, I guess that WAS really what I was asking, although the discussion has expanded into a debate about intellectual debate too.

A old uni friend of mine remarked on two things she's observed in her work with younger generations (in the arts) - she says they tend to say:
"I feel" rather than "I think" and
"I saw" rather than "I read"

I experienced a young woman in a book group recently pulling up a TikTok video to try to reinforce a point she'd made. It was slightly surreal.

That happens everywhere you get individual targets of collective action though. It's true on The Traitors, it was true in the USSR and it's true in China today. It's really not just a British thing. Get a group of people, tell them there are enemies amongst them and they go first for the academic intellectuals, then for the doctors, teachers and lawyers, then for the creative artists.

As for intellectuals themselves, they do of course exist but you won't find them on the internet, or at least not easily, because the internet's purpose isn't to help you find intellectuals. Its purpose is to generate constant multiple short- interest engagement hooks sufficient that you are always available to generate user data which in turn enables corporations to target you and successfully influence your consumer choices.

I’m sorry you feel like that. I can’t say it’s true for me, my friendship groups span from ages 25-65 and the inquisitiveness is strong in all age brackets. Again, this could be to do with how I know these people (uni and work).

@MyDelma 'As for intellectuals themselves, they do of course exist but you won't find them on the internet'

I presume you're using the 'internet' here more as a shorthand for broad social and mainstream media, because I'd argue that the internet has enabled intellectuals to operate in smaller, specialized spheres (podcasts, Substack, academic journals)?

Most of my good friends and family are like this - but I did go into a very academic profession and made a lot of my friends through university or work.

Also there will be plenty of people I know, who don't realise I have that side to me. I have to be comfortable around people to really discuss things. And I certainly don't post anything much on social media for instance - it's a private type of intellectualism rather than for display.

It's why I am so happy with DH, because for all his quirks he is equally interested in the world and we have really good discussions.

I am watching a philosophy series from the 1970s on youtube atm. It was presented by a guy called Bryan Magee. Each week a different academic would be his guest, and the two of them would spend an hour discussing a major philosopher. So one week it was Plato, then the next Aristotle, and so on. My god it makes you want to weep. No gimmicks, no woke narrative, no hidden agenda, no box ticking, no dumbing down, no sneering at Britain's history. Just two intelligent, eloquent people talking in pleasant RP accents about high culture. Absolutely unimaginable today. The producers would be hounded out of their jobs. You'd get all the usual accusations of snobbery, elitism, etc. I remember tuning in to Radio 4 once to listen to a programme about Jane Austen. Within five minutes they'd linked her to slavery and colonialism and that was it – that was all they talked about for the entire f-ing programme. Everything has either been dumbed down or politicised. The only thing left is Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time, which is superb. But Bragg is old now, and I just know that the minute he dies some smug little leftie twat will decide the programme needs to be 'revamped' (i.e ruined).

What these Oxbridge-liberal fucwits don't seem to understand is that those of us who aren't white or male or upper class don't all hate people who are. We don't see people like Bryan Magee as the enemy. And we don't all consider ourselves victims. We want eloquence and charm and refinement and good manners and high culture. And we don't give a sht if the people involved are straight white men or gay black women.

Also, we're grown ups. We've outgrown the smug, sneering, sixth-form leftie stage. We accept that some people really are brilliantly clever, and really do know far more about poetry and physics and high culture than the rest of us. We want to learn from them. It just staggers me how much goddam influence and control the left seem to have over academia and the arts.

Maybe I did a poor job of explaining yes the intellectually curious still exist, but not an organised movement and/or collaborating per se in my experience.

There appears to be layers now that didn’t exist before. The collaboration presents differently too, and it is more discreet.

I imagine it would be deeply threatening to our mediocre government, and will hardly be embraced by our society currently. Too many howls of elitism and privilege.

@NormaSnorks @Dappy777

"I am watching a philosophy series from the 1970s on youtube atm. It was presented by a guy called Bryan Magee. Each week a different academic would be his guest, and the two of them would spend an hour discussing a major philosopher."

Thanks so much for your post - I couldn't agree more. I've been a fan of Bryan Magee since I read his fab book on Schopenhauer. Today's Youtube viewing is now sorted. (Although wasn't it from 1987?)

I wonder if MN folks also enjoy Kenneth Clark's Civilisation (1969; on Youtube) or Jacob Bronowki's The Ascent of Man (1973: on Youtube)? which I'm not convinced would be enjoyed so much if they were broadcast today. Bonus points for comparing Civilisation with Civilisations.

(Hope I've got the poster's name right.)

I agree with you Dappy777 but I have to say “the only thing left is Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time,…some smug little leftie twat will decide…” don’t mince your words and let it all out girl 🎯!
I often have students and I have found over the years they seem much more like carbon copies of each other, occasionally I get a brilliant student, but they seem to be getting fewer.

I’d agree with this. If you’re in the younger generations it feels with certain groups or people they’re just waiting for you to step out of alignment with their approved opinions so they can attack you. I feel I can only debate or discuss anything remotely thorny with people I know really well, usually one to one.

OP, this is to prove your point

Financial Times: Have humans passed peak brain power?

I can't share token and it's behind paywall, but summary is here
Humans Are Getting Dumber

I can't help but thinking that the timeline coincides with boom of SM and the result is Trump/Reform/AfD etc etc