Intellectuals are not trying to make you feel dumb.
A theme I have noticed come up on this website, as well as more generally in my discussions with people about intellectual topics, is the idea that the people who work in fields such as philosophy, math, and science are intentionally speaking in such a way as to mislead readers into feeling that they are too dumb to understand what is being discussed. I would like to make use of an analogy to demonstrate how this is not really true.
Consider three musicians.
One musician, Kate, has just picked up her instrument a few months ago, and has been learning all of the fundamentals of music for the first time along with learning how to play her instrument.
The second musician, Dan, has been playing his instrument for a few years now, and understands the mechanics of his instrument quite well, and has a solid appreciation for the fundamental principles of music.
The third musician, Deborah, has been playing her instrument for a lifetime. She started playing in second grade and is now 57 years old. When she plays her instrument, she considers it to be one and the same as speaking. She may go as far as to see her instrument as a part of herself, and the fundamental principles of music are so deeply ingrained that she knows them as well as the behaviors of her closest family and friends.
Kate has been reading on the topic of music theory for a few weeks when she comes across a new book written by Deborah. The topic of the book is exactly what she is interested in: the types of harmonies and some of their history. She buys the book and heads home to start reading. A few pages in, she realizes she has no idea how the terms used in the book correspond to reality, and she is frankly intimidated by the fact that at least half of each page is written in music notation.
Turned off by the dense, unfamiliar material, she phones a friend from her music lessons who tells Kate that a lot of the books written by classical musicians are just boring and meaningless. They lack any sense of connection to real music and are just written to justify a paycheck from the publisher and a position at a nice university, and some of the writers are resentful of “less capable” musicians, a hostility that inevitably comes off in the terse writing.
Kate isn’t really sure if that’s true, since she has known a few professors in her lifetime and found them to be fairly normal people, just with a lot of knowledge about what they are interested in. She phones Dan to see if he can help her make heads or tails about what the book is saying. They get together and Dan shuffles through the book. He tells Kate that the book is really cool but pretty advanced, so it would be good to get some fundamental ideas about music notation, harmony, and other topics classical musicians use to discuss their craft. He gives Kate some recommendations on books that he used to learn from, and she returns to the book store…
Meanwhile, Deborah has been enjoying great praise from her friends about the release of the book. They engage in long discussions about the book, or even better, get together to play some music that explores the ideas she wrote about in the book. They have been playing and studying music together for years and much of their conversation is either about music, or takes place in the form of music itself. A lot of them gave Deborah ideas about what to research, or helped her accumulate materials for the writing of the book. Their goal was to describe and preserve, in some form, the things they have learned over a lifetime of musical practice and commitment for future musicians interested in these advanced topics.
The vast majority of people who write about complex topics are not trying to make the reader feel dumb. They are discussing ideas in the way that comes most naturally to them and the idea itself.
Music has an advantage over philosophy, mathematics, and other advanced topics because it still prioritizes aesthetic value over classical form. Even if someone interested in music doesn’t understand the classical form of the music, the music itself remains to be appreciated. The problem that philosophy, mathematics, and science have to deal with when being apprehended by various skill levels of readers is that there is almost no aesthetic value to the work, so readers may struggle to obtain value from the work if they are not familiar with the classical form of what is being discussed.
An unfortunate consequence of this fact is that readers who are essentially blocked from apprehending the works will jump to the conclusion that the works are devoid of any value. The topic is “too abstract,” “not applicable,” or “unimportant.” I suggest that jumping to this conclusion is not productive, and more harmful to the reader than anyone else, because whole pursuits of human intellect are essentially being dismissed without an understanding of why they have been pursued in the first place.
Some questions that a reader coming across a difficult work may benefit from asking instead are: “was this written for a specialist, or was it written for everyone to understand?”
“Is the author trying to have a discussion with other people of their own interests, or is the author trying to describe an idea to everyone?”
“If I wanted to understand this work, then what would I have to be comfortable with first?”
In conclusion, I just want to encourage people not to dismiss works simply on the basis that they don’t understand them. A lot of great music, writing, and art has been made on the assumption that the creator is trying to have a “discussion” with those people who understand what the creator is trying to do. Most of these works can in turn be made accessible by secondary works, but the frontier of human knowledge, creativity, and ingenuity is not expanded by simultaneously exposing novel ideas and making them accessible to the greatest number of readers.
