How Americans Regard Sports Heroes Versus Intellectuals Speaks Volumes

The difference between how Americans view athletes versus “intellectuals” is a touchstone for how we view ourselves.

April 19, 1980, more than 50,000 Parisians marched through the streets to mourn the loss of one of their own. Was it for a famous pop star, a beloved politician, or a nationally esteemed athlete? No, it was the funeral of Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existential philosopher and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (which he declined, along with the US$$500,000 prize, out of concern that it would compromise his independent thinking).

In the United States, this public display of mass grief and affection is usually reserved for pop culture icons, not unapologetic intellectuals. Maybe it's time to rethink this priority.

I can't imagine the death of an American philosopher or literary writer drawing such a large crowd.

But we turn to our fallen sports heroes: Babe Ruth had 150,000 at his funeral and Muhammad Ali had 100,000. Both well deserved.

On the other hand, how many attended the 1996 funeral of the equally deserving American poet Joseph Brodsky, an immigrant who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1987? I don't know the answer because the information is not available.

Can most of us name even a single contemporary American philosopher or influential literary author as easily as we can a Kardashian? If the answer is no, our initial reaction might be a slight feeling of shame (and perhaps a quick Google search), but it's more likely to be ridicule and dismiss the question with a “who cares?” reflects a troubling trend of lazy and arrogant anti-intellectualism that has very real and dangerous consequences for American society.

The difference between how Americans view athletes versus “intellectuals” is a good cornerstone of how we see ourselves. One statistic showed 93% of men watching sports, while another concluded that about 60% of Americans consider themselves sports fans. Count on me. I'm grateful for America's love of sports, a love I share as a huge baseball and basketball fan. Sports have become ingrained in our society as a means of activity for personal health and as an educational tool to teach moral values such as sportsmanship, discipline and teamwork. Even more significantly, athletes are second only to parents as role models for children. Although this puts a lot of pressure on athletes, some of whom are still very young, many others have rallied to accept this responsibility.

At the same time that we are increasingly embracing sports, recent years have produced a growing anti-intellectualism, starting with facts, science, and logic. Anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, even hearing impaired people are on the rise. Part of the reason for this is the promotion of fuzzy thinking as a positive political statement. All the people who were told in school that their opinions have no meaningful support and are full of logical fallacies can now unite in shared ignorance disguised as a conservative ethos. They start thumbing their noses at “elite” thinkers.

President Trump is the figurehead of celebrating irrational thinking as a patriotic act. He is the rabble-rouser in the hall, whipping the mob into a lynching frenzy. Every time there is a snowstorm, he talks about it as proof that there is no global warming. And he continues to do so, despite scientific experts who explain that there is a big difference between weather and climate. Just like your explanations about “clean coal” shows a fundamental lack of understanding about what that means. And there is his acquittal of the crimes of Russia's Vladimir Putin, North Korea's Kim Jong-un, and Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman, despite evidence presented by his own intelligence experts. This kind of convoluted thinking has led to the dismantling of EPA protections, attacks on voter access, and open political corruption without consequence. The lesson for our children: Ignore the facts and evidence if they don't agree with the benefits you personally receive. Even if it means everyone else will suffer. Ironically, this is the opposite lesson that sports teaches to sacrifice for the good of the team.

This is the philosophy of anti-vaxxers, who have justified their foolishness through junk science and discredited doctors. Suddenly they know more than the scientists who have been researching it for years, more than the statistics that show measles was nearly exterminated until it began to spread. Measles is on the rise, killing people around the world. Doctors say if current trends continue, 2019 could produce the worst U.S. measles outbreak in decades. What is their criteria for when to reject or embrace doctors? Are they leaning over the surgeon's shoulder during brain surgery on loved ones advising what to do next?

We should have a healthy attitude of skepticism towards experts because they have not always been proven correctly. But skepticism is not the same as believing in crazy conspiracy theories. Skepticism means demanding evidence through the scientific method (something that ushered in the Enlightenment). Instead, we even have what psychologists call the Dunning-Kruger Effect, in which people with little knowledge have the illusion that their opinions are superior to those of experts. They like to defend their innate “common sense,” which throughout history has proven to be the worst kind of sense. Worse, because they eschew logic, politicians target them with a constant barrage of emotional reasoning to boost their egos without challenging their minds. They are carried by the nose.

A culture can admire both the physical and the intellectual. Athletes' achievements inspire us to push the limits of what our bodies are capable of. We can run faster, jump higher, withstand more punishment than we thought. It makes us realize that we have untapped potential. Likewise, we can be inspired by the insights of our poets, the vision of our philosophers, the medical advances of our scientists. Both should make us strive to be bigger: stronger and smarter. The problem is that when the average person sees an athlete accomplish an incredible feat, there is the underlying belief that if they really wanted to train and practice, they could do it too. It's within your reach. But with intellectual feats, some people see it as beyond their comprehension and therefore beyond their reach. Instead of trying hard, they resent it. It's easier to look up baseball statistics than read an article about the melting ice caps. Furthermore, there is an implicit pressure for the latter: if I accept that something is wrong, aren't I obligated to do something about it? It's easier to deny, deny, deny. Just like “common sense” citizens who loudly denounced the existence of germs, the benefits of penicillin, or the evidence of DNA, such anti-intellectualism leads to illness, death, and the depletion of a society's progress.

Intellectuals do not help their cause when they dismiss pop culture and sports, demeaning their great achievements. Neither high culture nor pop culture is a measure of intelligence, only past exposure. Any attempt to use or as a means of implying superiority demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of what art strives to do: bring us closer by showing that we are all equal in our needs to love, be loved, and strive to be better tomorrow than who we are today. We achieve this by understanding that the elegant idea is as uplifting as the slam dunk. And that a triple piece is as graceful as a balletic arabesque. Disdaining the athlete or the intellect indicates someone who is not worthy of either.