Most intellectuals follow some ideological or philosophical tradition, many of which have been in practice for considerable periods. They must closely examine the trajectory of their chosen tradition as it has unfolded and affected human life. The past reveals itself through many sources, and if one has the knack, one can know history. They will then know what their tradition has done to people, whether good or bad.
Beyond this diachronic consciousness, intellectuals must also have a synchronic concern. We know that road accidents are rare in Germany, crimes are fewer in Japan, and civic services are excellent in Scandinavian countries. Such examples can be multiplied by citing different nations and even regions within nations. There are places where people wish to go and live, and others from which people want to escape at any cost. These conditions are not given but achieved through the application of human intellect and agency. A Hobbesian state, where life is “poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” reflects the poverty of collective intellect.
Human good is not as subjective as some claim, that what is good for one may be bad for another. History gives us clear evidence. Desperate people once risked their lives to climb over the Berlin Wall, fleeing the side that promised the slogan, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” What was proclaimed as a system of justice sounded heavenly, nay, an earthly heaven, but in practice it was a hell. When people seek only to escape, no rhetoric can conceal the failure. What is truly good proves itself in lived life, not in abstract proclamation.
The point is that intellectualism is a nuisance if it does not serve the general good in concrete and comparative terms. People are not meant for experimentation, least of all for an unending type of it. It is the duty of intellectuals to pre-empt the unsavoury and to rescue people from quagmires. Nobody else can take on this task.
It is a tragedy that many indulge in frivolity, often unable to figure out what they intend to do, and in self-justification throw around vacuous concepts, irrelevant name-dropping, and ideas they themselves are not at home with. Their hallmark is a lack of conviction coupled with a fanatical display of passion. For them, intellectualism becomes a matter of performance; they appear one way on the dais and another in the gallery.
Many professional intellectuals are funded by public money, which includes the filtered sweat of workers engaged in backbreaking labour. They ought to care for all, seek proven ways to help everyone, and avoid self-exaltation by invoking exotic names, miraculous-sounding concepts, and mind-blowing ideologies while trying to force realities into their modular imagination.
May God bless.
Niraj Kumar Jha
