Challenges.

The search for answers has lots of problems. But there is no greater threat to the search than the current wave of anti-intellectualism rolling over much of the West. Beyond simple ambivalence to knowledge, ignorance is now touted on the street corners as the new knowledge.

Certainly philosophy has not helped itself in this regard. Simply thinking about issues like the ones I'll be suggesting does not, in itself, provide any meaningful service to society or the individual. Action must come from right thought if right thought is to have any value. The ancients sought after "the good life"- the right way to live, to think, to be. Our society seems to have redefined the good life as simply having lots of material possessions and our fill of pleasures, and right thought as simply ignoring things which do not please us. Still, right thinking without right activity is empty.

It is no more empty however, than acting without thinking. Anti-intellectualism minimizes the role of thought and then cultivates disdain for the thought process itself by painting it as inherently unuseful in itself. Take for example the latest commercials from IBM. My favorite involves a man walking in on a room full of people laying flat on their backs "ideating." When asked what they are doing, the people let the man know that they are rethinking everything, attempting to innovate their world. The man then asks the logical question of how they plan to accomplish this, and the response from the mob is, "We haven't ideated that yet." The point of the commercial is plain: simply laying around thinking doesn't get the job done. On the other hand, I would argue that simply doing things without thought for how or why or what is equally silly, and just as destructive.

If we are to be serious about this pursuit, we must take both a desire to find answers and, just as importantly, a deep desire to implement the answers find once we have found them. Nothing else will do and integrity requires nothing less.