Intellectuals- Paul Johnson****

Just finished Intellectuals by Paul Johnson. He gives an excellent view into the lives of many intellectuals who have dramatically shaped the world we live in. They include: Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Brecht, Russell, Sarte, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gallancz, Lillian Hellman, Orwell and Connolly.

Nearly all them were communists and libertines. They loved mankind but not men, particularly the kind of man called woman. Most of these men led grotesque lives, had numerous affairs, insisted on open marriages (except for their spouses), were over their heads in debt and manipulated every friendship for their own benefit. Clearly not models to fashion a movement after. And yet, they were hugely influential.

Their stories remind me much of the times in which we live. We are not even a century past the horrors of Stalin's Russia, Mao's China and Hitler's Germany, and already we are diving headlong back into the utopian bliss of blatant socialism under our erstwhile dictator intellectual wannabe. His utopian ideas are indeed dangerous. Maybe those times will change in the next election cycle. If not, judging from the past, there will be blood.

The final paragraph of this book is simply outstanding and worth quoting.

"What conclusions should be drawn? Readers will judge for themselves. But I think I detect today a certain public scepticism when intellectuals stand up to preach to us, a growing tendency among ordinary people to dispute the right of academics, writers and philosophers, eminent though they may be, to tell  us how to behave and conduct our affairs. The belief seems to be spreading that intellectuals are not wiser as mentors, or worthier as exemplars, than the witch doctors or priests of old. I share that scepticism. A dozen people picked at random off the street are at least as likely to offer sensible views on moral and political matters as a cross-section of the intelligenstia. But I would go further. Of of the principal lessons of our tragic century, which has seen so many millions of innocent lives sacrificed in schemes to improve the lot of humanity, is - beware intellectuals.  Not merely should they be kept well away from the levers of power, they should also be objects of particular suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice. Beware committees, conferences and leagues of intellectuals. Distrust public statements issued from their serried ranks. Discount their verdicts on political leaders and important events. For intellectuals, far from being highly individualistic and no-conformist people, follow certain regular patterns of behavior. Taken as a group, they are fore often ultra-conformist within the circles formed by those whose approval they seek and value. That is what makes them, en masse, so dangerous, for it enables them to create climates of opinion and prevailing orthodoxies, which they themselves often generate irrational and destructive courses of action. Above all, we must at all time remember what intellectuals habitually forget: that people matter more than concepts and must come first. The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas."