Foreign Policy magazine -- "Where the world’s top thinkers come to debate the most salient issues of the day," as the mag modestly describes itself -- recently ran a beauty pageant for the top 100 "top thinkers" of the world. (What exactly does a top thinker do to a bottom thinker, I wonder? But I digress.)
It's a sad list. Noam Chomsky makes the cut -- but he's only No. 11, right above notorious craniac... Al Gore! The loathesome Richard Dawkins is no. 19. Salman Rushdie(23), Vaclav Havel(26), right above Christopher Hitchens[!]... so far it's mostly the Academy Of The Overrated(*), but it quickly turns to downright comedy with Thomas Friedman(40), David Petraeus(65), and Lawrence Summers(67). I'm certainly glad the general edged out Harvard's pride. Porky Larry must be hopping mad about that.
Man oh man. If these are really the "top thinkers" of the world we are in much deeper trouble than I thought.
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(*) Thanks to Woody Allen for this key concept.
Comments (15)
I'll give them a pass for the number of Arabic names in the top 10 (I dont know them, and they may be all quislings!), but all in all this is a useful anti-summer reading list -- avoid these authors at all costs!
Posted by plato's cave | July 1, 2008 5:31 PM
Posted on July 1, 2008 17:31
Yes. I suppose after having promoted the vote, they couldn't spike the story -- but even so, the crass middlebrow vulgarity of this list reflects very badly on the mag's readership.
Posted by MJS | July 1, 2008 6:02 PM
Posted on July 1, 2008 18:02
I recognized Muhammad Yunus in the top ten. He's the grand old man of the micro-loansharking industry.
Posted by Al Schumann | July 1, 2008 6:28 PM
Posted on July 1, 2008 18:28
So much for the CFR being the puppetmaster of the cosmos' destiny... conspiracy cranks of homegrown flavor, where right meets left and melds into white settler populist millenarianism, can rest easy.
Posted by gluelicker | July 1, 2008 8:00 PM
Posted on July 1, 2008 20:00
Why do you loathe Dawkins?
Posted by StO | July 2, 2008 8:45 PM
Posted on July 2, 2008 20:45
Dawkins -- The short and not very satisfactory answer is that he's more or less a sociobiologist. But it goes deeper than that. I've been working for months on a long piece about just why I hate him -- and how much -- and it just won't gel.
But you'll see it here first, when I finally give up on it -- since God knows nobody else will ever publish it.
Posted by MJS | July 2, 2008 9:52 PM
Posted on July 2, 2008 21:52
Yes, I don't yet know why you dislike sociobiology.
Posted by StO | July 2, 2008 11:01 PM
Posted on July 2, 2008 23:01
Why might one dislike sociobiology? You might as well ask, why might one repudiate the gauging of "intelligence" (sic) by measuring cranial capacity?
Posted by gluelicker | July 2, 2008 11:14 PM
Posted on July 2, 2008 23:14
Jeez, you hate Dawkins for sociobiology? Terrific. How about this public atheism - boy, that's one big problem for you also?
I'm also working on a piece about someone I really, really hate. This person is truly "loathsome." I loathe him, what he says, nearly everything he does or is associated with. The man is vile, servile, and contumacious. He represents badness, and has been given a free pass by the rest of the damn world. I can't wait to carve this man up, reveal to the blinded world this awful awful guy's faults.
Nah, on second thought, who gives a shit. Let me wipe the drool off my face and go out and feed the birds - I got some living to do.
Posted by mjosef | July 3, 2008 9:04 AM
Posted on July 3, 2008 09:04
I don't really know anything about sociobiology, but thanks for your scorn.
Posted by StO | July 3, 2008 1:23 PM
Posted on July 3, 2008 13:23
StO -- My dislike of sociobiology is its habit of constructing contrived untestable just-so stories that purport to root social institutions in biology. I think it's both very poor science and tends to legitimate the existing order.
Posted by MJS | July 3, 2008 1:45 PM
Posted on July 3, 2008 13:45
Thanks, MJS.
Posted by StO | July 3, 2008 2:04 PM
Posted on July 3, 2008 14:04
StO, I dislike Dawkins' social observations too. He's got a knack for coming up with metaphors -- e.g. the "selfish gene" -- that require so much backpedaling from him that I wonder how he conceived them in the first place. The implications of narcissism and rational self-maximizer liberalism at the dna level gives me the willies.
Posted by Al Schumann | July 3, 2008 4:55 PM
Posted on July 3, 2008 16:55
Okay, so my little burst of scorn didn't get much play. I'll try once again - you find Sir RD "loathsome" as in Pol Pot/Donald Rumsfeld/killing babies kind of "loathsome"? With all the true horror being perpetuated by powerful elites across the world, which you do a usually top-notch job of discovering and abjuring, the good don is somehow the embodiment to you of real, deep-seated Bad?
You should make your brief against the man, but I haven't heard him utter apologies for hideous economic inequality like his friend and sort-of sociobiologist Michael Shermer did in "The Mind of the Market." Whatever his observations are about sociobiology, I think they have the global consequence of a pair of worn sneakers, since he is a professor, very mild-mannered at that, not some ferocious hedge fund manager or death-dealing DARPA academician. He was once mean to the Amish, and he has his brie-and-sepulcher detractors who cannot abide his fervent anti-religiosity, but his public atheism has been an exemplary show. What's wrong with narcissism, Al? Is that what Dawkins is preaching? - seems I missed that. Better go look in my reflection.
And if sociobiology "tends to legitimate the existing order," MJS, what the hell in the academy does not? Smoking bongs in the dorm rooms doesn't do the same thing? The attacks on Dawkins always seem to consist of generalized antipathy, without specific citation of what he has done or said. I'm not big on "science" as some sort of beatific counterforce to the absurdity of religion, but give the man his due, he's done far more against the scourge of supernatural infantilism than you or me. And he's yet to back down.
Posted by mjosef | July 3, 2008 5:46 PM
Posted on July 3, 2008 17:46
mjosef, I think your genes have agency and are making you defend Dawkins because they reckon it's the best way to reproduce themselves.
Posted by Al Schumann | July 3, 2008 6:09 PM
Posted on July 3, 2008 18:09