California's first governor, Leland Stanford, gave birth to Stanford University, which in turn gave birth to Silicon Valley.
Today, Stanford University and Silicon Valley, remain the concrete representatives of 'intellectual knowledge'.
But many might not have imagined that Leland Stanford, celebrated by posterity for some time, and his founding of Stanford University, would be linked to 'anti-intellectualism'.
New York-born Leland Stanford was disillusioned with the education of eastern universities in the United States, which he believed were producing useless bookworms. Leland Stanford hoped that the university he founded would overcome the educational problems of the eastern universities through a "practical rather than theoretical education".
And in the book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, published in the 1960s, Leland Stanford's doings were criticized to some extent by the author as 'anti-intellectualism', those classical, traditional, theoretical courses closely tied to Western literature and art and philosophy, which the author considered to be the respected model of intellectual training, that is, true intellectual knowledge.
As for the practical engineering education at Stanford at the time, or the business courses at Wharton, in the opinion of the book's author, and Columbia University professor, historian Richard Hofstadter, it was equivocal, not elegant enough, not intellectual enough.
How did Apple CEO Cook become the arch-villain archetype?
Perhaps the current Apple CEO Cook, who had an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering and a master's in business administration, would also have been considered by the late Richard Hofstadter to have no real intellect, even though he ran the highest market cap company on the planet.
Perhaps it didn't occur to Cook himself that not only might he be judged as having no intellect, but that the villain was based on him inside two American movies in quick succession.
In the satirical movie Don't Look Up, in which everything and everyone is stupid regardless of enemy, the two villains who cause the Earth to be crashed into the end of humanity are a president who blends Trump's personality, Hillary's gender, and Clinton's style, and a president with Cook's appearance and behavior, Zuckerberg's big data surveillance business, Musk's space program Top Entrepreneur.
The villain in Jurassic World 3, Lewis Dodgson, is on the right.
During the premiere of Jurassic World 3, several colleagues, not knowing whether they couldn't resist the boring plot or they just couldn't help themselves, complained in several groups that the villainous entrepreneur looked so much like Cook, and that the villain's lair looked just like Apple Park, the headquarters of Apple.
The main reason people have such doubts is that Apple counts among the best in the world when it comes to corporate ethics; as for Cook, his external image has always been that of a steady middle of the road drip, a far cry from Jobs or Musk, who have a strong personal style.
▲ Left is a parody of a webmaster's drawing, right is Time Magazine
The reason a man who presents no outward moral flaws has become the prototype for two movie villains may be his labeled identity: the head of the highest market cap tech company.
The villain's lair looks like Apple Park, Apple's new headquarters.
Even though Facebook founder Zuckerberg, whose reputation has collapsed in the US, would be a better movie villain, presumably he and his company haven't been rich enough to inspire a wealth-hating mentality lately, so the villain's prototype had to be the company with the highest market cap, or Cook's neutral and kind image would be a better target for the bully.
At least Zuckerberg has personally expressed his displeasure when confronted with the 'scandalous' portrayal of him by The Social Network.
Imagine if the villain was based on Musk, the iron man of Silicon Valley with tens of millions of fans, and maybe Jurassic World 3 would have been half as bad.
In the United States, giant tech companies and entrepreneurs, already tied to capitalism, have gone from being laudable progressive forces in reality to villainous archetypes that everyone cries out for in the movies, all in less than a decade.
In the movie, the evil entrepreneur dares to force scientists to conduct unethical and illogical experiments for his own personal gain, ultimately leading to the perilous extinction of humanity. The reason for this projection is that in reality there are still very many people who are hostile to technological progress and hostile to corporations and entrepreneurs because of their fear of AI, robotics, biotechnology, cosmic exploration, etc.
Worse than Cook, it's former richest man, Gates
Compared to the reality of what happened to the former richest man in the world, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, perhaps Cook is relatively lucky to be the archetype of the labeled villain only in the movie. After all, the former is experiencing a protracted and voluminous wave of online violence and vilification.
Bill Gates is known in China as a philanthropist who has devoted himself to researching solutions to AIDS and malaria, especially in Africa, and is concerned about inequality and climate change since he stopped being CEO of Microsoft.
And as the New Crown epidemic rages, Gates is making donations while calling for global cooperation to strengthen investment in New Crown diagnostics, vaccines and treatment tools, and to improve health early warning systems to support low- and middle-income countries.
It's fair to say that in the matter of fighting the new crown, Gates has maintained a scientific and rational approach, along with the generosity of a philanthropist.
▲ There is a large number of people in the United States who are opposing Bill Gates
But in the court of popular opinion in the United States, Gates has instead become the 'devil' and the 'originator of the new crown' in the eyes of many, especially after the revelation of his extramarital affair, his personal reputation has dropped a lot.
Because years ago, Gates mentioned in a public speech that if anything could kill more than 10 million people in the next few decades, it would probably be a highly contagious virus, not a war.
And then in 2019 the Gates Foundation has organized workshops that brought together health experts from a dozen countries around the world to extrapolate a global pandemic simulation called the novel zoonotic coronavirus (CAPS).
The virus was initially transmitted from bats to pigs, then to humans, and eventually mutated to become transmissible from person to person, resulting in a highly contagious epidemic. It takes only 6 months for the virus to spread globally. As the epidemic spreads, flights between countries are halted, border controls are imposed and travel bookings are reduced by 45 per cent; false information and disinformation circulate on social networks, triggering widespread panic; at the same time, the epidemic will trigger a global financial crisis, with stock markets plunging by 20 to 40 per cent everywhere.
Originally, Gates and the Gates Foundation acted as predictions and early warnings, but the predictions were so accurate that they were doubted by a significant number of Americans: you predicted so accurately, so was this your doing?
Further this anti-intellectual logic developed into a conspiracy theory that Gates was executing a 'human eradication program'.
▲ Pictures of rumors about Gates' evil plans
Because Gates is banking on the logic of upgrading sanitation and vaccination rates in Africa to help boost child survival and lower fertility rates in Africa, i.e., to have fewer and better children, and then from there to ease the burden of living on African people and boost economic development.
This logic is slightly complicated, and with the fact that lower fertility rates lead to fewer births, many people have again simplified the logic to say that Gates is promoting vaccination precisely to wipe out the population and carry out a 'human eradication program'.
At the same time, sub-intellectual rumors have been spreading like wildfire and have formed a logical closure loop: the vaccine has always been Gates' weapon to enslave and maim humanity, the New Crown pandemic is out, then people will all need to be vaccinated, the vaccine has a chip implanted by Gates inside, the chip enters the body and everyone is subject to Gates' control. Put that way, Gates has even more incentive to create and spread the New Crown virus.
In the United States, anti-vaccination is a banner of anti-intellectualism, and as the saying goes, there is no heck of a good fighter, and because of vaccination, infectious diseases like smallpox are extinct, polio is nearly extinct, and infectious diseases like whooping cough and diphtheria are no longer scary because of vaccines. But many people do not see that vaccines are behind the extinction and hibernation of infectious diseases, but assume that the world was never meant to have these diseases and that vaccines exist for ulterior motives.
This is similar to the story told by Luo Yonghao before: he previously lived in a district with insufficient heating, very cold in the winter, so he went to fight for the rights of adequate heating, but the people in the same district did not understand that he was unreasonable, the heating is not warm to wear more. Finally the district property and heating company can not stand Luo Yonghao a group of people fighting for adequate heating, and then the group said Luo Yonghao unreasonable people change their mouth: just say it, heating this is not good, give others to add to the trouble why?
▲ Owen (left) insists that the ground level says
Not only is it anti-vaccine, but there is a significant portion of the population in the US that does not subscribe to evolution and also adheres to the ground level theory. One of the most well-known proponents of the ground level theory would be Irving, who is known to Chinese fans as 'O'Shennan'.
Both the lofty 'intellect', or the obscure 'science', and the 'skills' that need to be learned, mean that they are not easily understood or accepted. On the contrary, logic that can be understood at a glance, and simple attributions that are unfailingly easy to understand, are most likely to make the anti-intellectual crowd accept the chaos of their own brains. After all, if it weren't for the mathematical calculations of the ancient Greek philosopher Eratosthenes, and Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe to prove that the earth is round, the earth being flat would actually be more in line with human intuition.
Similarly, a popcorn movie that's only 2 hours long is pretty much limited to simple attribution and choice of labeling to establish a villain: if the evil entrepreneur who wants to destroy humanity through biotechnology in reality is Gates, then the entrepreneur who wants to mutilate humanity through biotechnology for personal gain in the movie could be Cook.
Variations on a theme of anti-intellectual rhetoric
Although Richard Hofstadter, who wrote Anti-intellectualism in American Life, could not accurately foresee the current state of anti-intellectualism in America today, he did mention that anti-intellectual arguments undergo 'thematic variations'.
Now that the anti-intellectual crowd simply scoffs at the classically elegant traditional intellects and no longer cares, the new anti-intellectual targets have become science and technology, and the businesses and entrepreneurs who rely on technological advances for their commercial success.
Simply put, there is a consumer downgrade happening with anti-intellectualism.
As mentioned at the beginning, Stanford University, the representative of modern intellect, was also considered at one time to be so much anti-intellectualism, where intellect refers mainly to the level of ideas. The cause of this may also be the professors of history at the East Coast universities of the United States, with their reverence for tradition and their prudence for the future.
For example, Jill Lepore, a professor of history at Harvard University, recently wrote an article criticizing Musk, saying that he represents the crazy, extravagant, impractical capitalism of the "techno-men" who are exploring extraterrestrial, human, and virtual worlds under the banner of money-making, i.e. Muskism.
And Musk happens to be a Stanford student who, like many Silicon Valley bigwigs, chose to drop out of school and start his own business.
It follows that these professors of history have been critical of technology and business for decades, but popular anti-intellectualism has undergone 'thematic variation', that is, downgrading.60 The example of variation given by Richard Hofstadter a year ago was the resistance of farmers to agricultural technology, even though it could help them increase their yields and incomes. But the peasant community, for one, would not go so far as to despise Michelangelo's frescoes, or Voltaire's ideas; after all, they are unlikely to intersect.
Now, the same is true for the rednecks in the Rusty States of America, where Michelangelo and Voltaire are too far away, but the rich representatives Cook and Gates are close at hand, and with Windows computers or iPhones, on Facebook and Twitter, rednecks can easily see what they're up to and believe the rumors about them.
▲ Decaying Industries in the Rusty States of America
Interestingly, most of these devices, most of this software, again came from the tech companies on the West Coast of the United States. It is also the case that the growth of these tech companies and the contemporaneous process of globalization went hand in hand with the gradual decline of the steel, auto, chemical, mining and other industries in the Midwest and the rusty states of the Great Lakes region of the U.S. So, once again, the anti-intellectual crowd makes simple attributions, and then the two beneficiaries of this process are natural targets of the disillusioned.
And while in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life the author attributes the anti-intellectualism of the 1960s in part to the ultra-conservative ideology of the time, McCarthyism, when we look back at this wave of anti-intellectualism against American entrepreneurs, the timing also overlaps with the last American presidency, whose ideas many have called the New McCarthyism.
Once again, the historical parallels are borne out, but perhaps the similarities of anti-intellectualism are not only present in these two periods of American history, but also in more parts of the planet.