My Attempt at Self-Countering

This is my attempt to counter myself. My blogpost “The Death of Intellectualism,” is about Chris Hedges article “America the Illiterate.” In the post, I talked about Hedges’ theory that the sharpest cultural divide in America today is not race or socioeconomic status, but instead alignment with either the print or image-based cultures. I will attempt to counter my original statement that I agreed with Hedges’ belief. I picked this post because I take a definite position that is counter-able. I figured forwarding my own blog would seem overly contrived, so I chose to counter instead. As you will see, I state my disagreement with what I said and then try to move the conversation in a different direction. Whether I succeeded or not has yet to be determined, but here goes.

Earlier in the semester, I said:

The American public, according to Chris Hedges, is strictly divided into two
sects, the enlightened and the unenlightened. One third of the nation’s
population is either illiterate or barely literate, so there is predictably a
rather large divide between those who of the print-based culture and those of
the image-based culture.For the most part, however, this divide is largely
covert. The general consensus on what divides America the greatest would be
race, religion, socioeconomic status or political affiliation. I’d have to agree
with Hedges, however, that it is the print vs. image divide that has alienated
this country the most.

While it is undeniable that the print/image-based culture line is a point of division in this country, to say that it is certainly what has divided the country the most, however, is erroneous. Seldom do people in the real world immediately draw distinctions between themselves and others, consciously or subconsciously, based on membership of either the print or image-based culture. It’s hard to look at someone and immediately say “I’m not like that person, they are from the print/image-based culture and I’m not.” Differences in terms of race, ethnicity, linguistics and even socioeconomic status are much more immediately perceivable.

So this begs the question, does the print/image-based culture divide stem from other cultural divisions? Does membership of either the print or image-based culture influence one’s socioeconomic and/or educational status? Or does one’s socioeconomic and/or educational status influence whether they are members of the print or image-based culture? The answer to this question is yes. Cultural status, whether it’s socioeconomic or print/image, is self-perpetual. Therefore the print vs. image divide is not a perceivable divide within itself; instead it’s essentially a combination of all other cultural divides. It is not racial or ethnic, and it is not political or economic either. Because an ambiguous intellectual divide is so hard to perceive, it cannot be the most divisive thing in our culture.