tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post5591764765762892384..comments2024-02-12T23:25:09.583-08:00Comments on Overweening Generalist: What's a Generalist Good For? michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-71404541536087539002013-04-17T15:06:48.043-07:002013-04-17T15:06:48.043-07:00That's about as fine an explanation as I'v...That's about as fine an explanation as I've read. Thanks. It rings true.<br /><br />I think maybe some readers of RAW forget he acknowledged quite baldly the dire straits humanity might be in, and there's lots of deep diagnosis of Our Problems. It's easy to be blinded by his optimism and take away that Wilson was some LSD/Berkeley blissed- out rah-rah futurist, but too given to optimism. <br /><br />I think RAW was right about the NY intellectuals and optimism, not to mention their inflated senses that they were the ONLY intellectuals in the world of any weight and heft. (Not all of 'em, but a lot of 'em. Sontag seems unbelievably full of herself at times, for example. And I have a neighbor in Berkeley who has some stories to tell about Annie Liebowitz and Sontag...very unflattering to Sontag. And, to digress: Krassner's friend Margot St. James and RFK's micropenis...)michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-49637163307861645802013-04-17T08:41:47.587-07:002013-04-17T08:41:47.587-07:00I asked a similar question of a professor in gradu...I asked a similar question of a professor in graduate school. I asked something like why the people with Ph.D.'s in English like the Pynch so much (a group which overlaps with the world of "New York intellectuals"). He said he thought it due to how Pynchon lent himself to popular literary theories.<br /><br />I think both those worlds have accepted Pynchon more than Wilson because Pynch came up through their farm system, attending an Ivy League school, publishing in appropriate little magazine and winning appropriate awards, plus Pynchon has an appropriate pessimistic attitude (seemingly).Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-79530437232018300852013-04-16T21:41:48.230-07:002013-04-16T21:41:48.230-07:00@BrentQ: The last time I took one of those it was ...@BrentQ: The last time I took one of those it was the Humanmetrics Jung Typology Test, and I scored INFP, thinking I was INTP. Maybe I'll find THE Myers-Briggs and do another one.<br /><br />I like your idea about INTPs and generalists and their dwindling ranks in academia. Russell Jacoby makes a big deal out of young smart people going to university and valuing the "professional role" rather than the emissary to the public of Big Ideas. The new academics write impenetrably for each other...other specialists like themselves. It's a drag. <br /><br />And Scialabba touches on this more than Jacoby, but digital media seems to have militated against a working class public still interested in knowing about ideas in a more-than-superficial way.<br /><br />I'd put Borges there, too. And Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley. I want everyone to have their own long lists of cherished thinkers/writers, and I honestly don't care if they think my list is full of marginals and weirdos...michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-91422345861661725902013-04-16T21:32:34.469-07:002013-04-16T21:32:34.469-07:00@ Tom: I wrote that list, knowing I'd forget a...@ Tom: I wrote that list, knowing I'd forget about 20 that "should" be on there AND knowing I'd leave out someone else's favorite that they thought they might have shared with me, but hey: it's only a sampling. <br /><br />@ Eric: WHY do you think Pynchon went on to become a Big Deal while, when I utter the name "Robert Anton Wilson" around PhDs they usually shake their head "no" silently? Personally, I do think Pynch's prose style is immaculate and his mind first-rate. He's funny and encyclopedic. And he had major NY-based publishers...michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-34234646415105800612013-04-16T17:37:11.954-07:002013-04-16T17:37:11.954-07:00Michael: Are you familiar with the Myers-Briggs pe...Michael: Are you familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality test?<br /><br />It was first developed by Jung (a great generalist in his own right) I believe. When I was in school trying to figure out why I couldn't pick a specialization, I did the test and realized I may belong to one of the types known as INTP. It would seem that most famous generalists/philosophers were of that type as well. It is also one of the least common personality types which might explain the increasing rarity of influential generalist types in academia and mainstream culture.<br /><br />Also, I would put one my a favourite writers Jorge Luis Borges on your list of generalists.BrentQhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13348133246050450327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-26227630932859097532013-04-15T11:51:30.453-07:002013-04-15T11:51:30.453-07:00Terrific piece and terrific comments. I wonder ab...Terrific piece and terrific comments. I wonder about the future and the future of education, while I ponder Proust, etc. I get email from the New York Review of Books, and I like some of the articles. They used to publish a lot by Joseph Kerman and Charles Rosen. I know they will contemplate the new Pynchon novel. However, as you comment, they neglect a lot of writing I find interesting, from Bob Wilson to yourself.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-77353528786817156682013-04-15T09:41:55.912-07:002013-04-15T09:41:55.912-07:00Very cool list, just wanted to say thanks. Very cool list, just wanted to say thanks. Cleveland Okie (Tom Jackson)https://www.blogger.com/profile/07810736442596736041noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-7309274031678560642013-04-14T22:52:08.204-07:002013-04-14T22:52:08.204-07:00Robert Anton Wilson, Philip K. Dick, Terence McKen...Robert Anton Wilson, Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, Marshall McLuhan, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Robert Hass, Peter Lamborn Wilson/Hakim Bey, Tom Robbins, HP Lovecraft, Joseph Campbell, Raymond Chandler, William S. Burroughs, Timothy Leary, Clifford Pickover, Rudy Rucker, Thomas Pynchon, Douglas Hofstadter, Gregory Bateson, Colin Wilson and Giambattista Vico, Montaigne, Herodotus, Shakespeare, Freud and Lucretius as a mere start. <br /><br />For "straight" or academic writers: Korzybski, Chomsky, Lakoff, Damasio, Peter Berger, Randall Collins, E.O. Wilson, Mark Monmonier, Oliver Sacks (recently come out in a big way as not all that "straight"!), Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Robert Sapolsky, and Elaine Pagels.<br /><br />There's a very readable yet hardcore academic book by a colleague of Lakoff's at Berkeley: From Molecule To Mind, by Jerome Feldman. I read that over and over and over. I find it very trippy and totally wonderful...and I always wonder what he'd say if I told him this. I think the ideas about how language actually works is finally - probably - "right." And I consider this work an ideal extension of Korzybski. But it's only one book. And yet: more than enough for me. Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow is becoming sort of like that for me, too. Nick Herbert's Quantum Reality has functioned like that for me for a long time.<br /><br />I'm leaving out some people, but this is me typing an answer quickly...<br /><br />I'd put my team up against the New York Intellectuals, any day, any time, any place.<br />michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-16142360467252366922013-04-14T13:25:05.559-07:002013-04-14T13:25:05.559-07:00Any chance you'll list some of the favorites y...Any chance you'll list some of the favorites you mention in point No. 8?Cleveland Okie (Tom Jackson)https://www.blogger.com/profile/07810736442596736041noreply@blogger.com