Re-reading Hofstadter

Chapter 2 is largely about the difference between intelligence (being good at hard cognitive tasks) and intellectualism (enjoying ideas), and why America disdains intellect (and, increasingly, intelligence). Some choice quotes:
1) On the propensity of intellectuals to get involved in political and social issues:

...it is the historic glory of the intellectual classes of the West in modern times that, of all the classes which could be called in any sense privileged, it has shown the largest and most consistent concern for the well-being of the classes which lie below it on the social scale.  Behind the intellectual's feeling of commitment is the belief that in some measure the world should be made responsive to his capacity for rationality, his passion for justice and order; out of this conviction arises much of his value to mankind and, equally, much of his value to do mischief.

I think the last part is a reference to progressive education.

2) On zealots:

If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess of commitment to some special and constricting idea.

The origin of kool-aid, IMHO.

3) Of course, the antidote for kool-aid, the surest defense against the allure of one over-riding idea displacing all others, is a sense of playfulness.  And so I love this quote:

But in using the terms play and playfulness, I do not intend to suggest any lack of seriousness; quite the contrary. Anyone who has watched children, or adults, at play will recognize that there is no contradiction between play and seriousness, and that some forms of play induce a measure of grave concentration not so readily called forth by work.

Indeed.  There are few things more wonderful than the serious expression on the face of a child busily drawing or stacking blocks of scooping mud into buckets.  They are engaged in a complicated task of their own devising, working hard to get it right. They are not merely adorable little people (though they certainly are that), they are also showing all the signs of taking seriously their role as members of a species that uses symbols and tools. They are throwing themselves into the glories of being a human engaged in quintessentially human tasks. The most engrossing play is when we are most truly human.

In that sense, "action shots" from a classroom where people are sitting around smiling at each other miss the most important action of all: Focused, concentrated time on task.

4) Also on play:

...in the United States the play of the mind is perhaps the only form of play that is not looked upon with the most tender indulgence.

Indeed.  We revel in sports and chuckle at the debate team.

5) Finally, on the disease that ravages my university, and many others:

American education can be praised, not to say defended, on many counts; but I believe ours is the only educational system in the world vital segments of which have fallen into the hands of people who joyfully and militantly proclaim their hostility to intellect and their eagerness to identify with children who show the least intellectual promise.

In fact, an administrator once boasted to me of her allegedly low IQ. (Her words, not mine.) I actually think she's quite smart, and that the dumb things she does are calculated plays to gain favoritism in an anti-intellectual system. But she felt the need to insist on a low IQ, because that's the system we work in. In this era, I should have asked her if trade wars are good and easy to win.