One of the most aggravating things to me in this world has to be the absolutely rampant anti-intellectualism that dominates so many conversations and debates, and its influence just seems to be expanding. Do you think there will ever actually be a time when this ends? I'd hope so once people become more educated and cultural changes eventually happen, but as of now it honestly infuriates me like few things ever have.
That may be the case but it doesn’t change the strong current of anti-intellectualism in modern societies.
It’s useful to those in power, for example.
No disagreement there, but simply declaring that “those who don’t see things my way are anti-intellectual” is a drastic over-simplification of how things got this way. Declaring it into Lemmy, which an echo chamber of progressives and communists (including myself) means we all know who he’s talking about, which means it’s just a progressive dog-whistle for the “them” that we want to be mad at.
There are a lot of intelligent people who hold what I’m sure OP would consider anti-intellectual stances. I live around them, work with them, play games with them, etc. it’s much more valuable to understand who they are and how they got to their beliefs than it is to simply vilify them.
I haven’t seen the argument “disagreement is anti-intellectual” being used here, though I’m sure people act that way. It’s hard to be disagreed with: people tend to entrench rather than change.
It’s still worth noting that anti-intellectualism is pushed as a tool of division and control though. Sure it occurs naturally but weaponized at a systemic level it is much more of a threat to society.