Public policy, social issues, gender politics, religion, civitas, and other taboo topics fall under the hammer of Shava's iconoclasmic force of natural philosophy.
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Sunday, February 23, 2003
2:31 PM
The integrated intellectual
Recently, a friend has been tempting me to join an intentional community in east Texas, with a group of amazing people. It was actually really nifty to go through the process of thinking about moving to Texas, because it clarified a great deal of my feeling about community. East Texas seems like a place where my ability to act in civil society might be seriously stunted. I need to be immersed and active in a civic environment that is receptive to my efforts -- I've jelled that out of my values. It's probably just necessary to my sense of community on all scales.
It's important to my sense of family, because I want Joseph to grow up seeing how to be active in the civil society around him. It's important to me socially, because it is through these kinds of efforts that I often find sangha, a company off seekers. And it's important to me on a grander social level, because I feel that I have a vision of society, and know the way to manifest things that will make it better -- and that's not ego, it's obligation. It's part of what I'm for, to do these things, and in the process, teach others how to do the same.
I think it's so important for those of us who walk through life with our eyes open, that we not become disaffected from community. So many of us were treated very badly by our peers, growing up. We were made to feel that we were hopelessly clueless geeks, when in many cases, our perspective and perceptions were more astute than the adults around us.
As adults, many of us have been branded (and embraced!) the label of intellectual, yet our society doesn't trust intellectuals. The greater social perception is that intellectuals either waste their lives on useless problems, or spend their lives arrogantly imposing values on society that are disjunct from the general values of the people.
Today, more than ever in my personal historic memory, we need to energy of perceptive, smart, wise people to be working in society, not disaffected from our government and from the people. And not all of us working in little intellectual self-imposed ivory towers and cultural ghettos, though much good work can come out of those environments, too. Which means we need to learn to integrate the values of the people, and become part of the public, and gain the trust of those people by working with what is obviously needed, respecting the will of our communities, and educating our communities to our own visions. It's the only way to preserve democracy and education in a time of rapid change and media overload.
Let's make being smart, pattern making, media savvy, critical thinkers into a fashion trend. "Intellectual" is a subculture. It's not an IQ threshold. It's an attitude.
This is a world that needs to bridge the gap between the culture of intellectuals and the good will of the people. We can not afford, in the age of media and information, to be anti-intellectual, and that means that intellectuals have to be part of the people.
My dad did that, and it's part of what I need to do with my life too. I'm not a city girl, or a country girl. I grew up in a smallish town in Vermont, and I lived in Boston for about eleven years, and Portland is in between. I have been a rural digital divide activist, and am now working on a particularly urban problem with Mission K5. But regardless of where I live, rural or urban, I am a creature of civitas, a civic animal. And I will devote what energy and talents I can to making my community better.
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