Comment by zamalek
10 years ago
> Could anyone suggest cultural, social or technological reasons that may have temporarily united the intellectuals of the age?
I think the Internet played a very strong hand with uniting the "unintellectuals" of our age.
As for your actual question the answer lies within that sentence "philosophy." Philosophy has been found[1] to be an excellent way to teach children how to access their intelligence; most importantly regarding critical thought. To blindly follow the stupidity of others you must have first failed to practice critical thought.
[1]: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/21/teachin...
> I think the Internet played a very strong hand with uniting the "unintellectuals" of our age.
It seems like the Internet has the opposite effect of uniting people. By allowing people to form ever tighter communities around specific topics, it allows people to feel like they've been united closer with others, but the interests of the groups they form are narrower than pre-Internet social groups. As to whether this affects intellectuals and unintellectuals more, it's hard to say. I could definitely be swayed either way. I've observed communities that fill every square of the (intellectual, unintellectual) x (narrow interest, broad interest) matrix.