Gnome Chawmskee

I do believe I made a bit of a Facebook row by posting a description courte of my feelings for Mr. Noam Chomsky. I offer this, then, as an attempt at clarification.

My distaste with Chomsky - my disgust, really - stems from the same problem I have with Richard Dawkins, Jean-Paul Sartre and a number of other "leading intellectuals" - namely, that they have all used their well-deserved renown to peddle some anti-intellectual agenda that, in the case of Chomsky and Dawkins, runs quite contrary to the work that earned them their renown in the first place.

Let's take Dawkins: a brilliant scientist who has single-handedly made some of the greatest advances in the theory of evolution that have ever been made. And what do we find him doing now? What have all his rigorous, admirable contributions to the empirical method of observation brought him to? Well, he's now made a name for himself in the anti-scientific, anti-empirical field of theology: he is attacking "god."

Now it should be recognized that intellectual integrity forbids a genius of such rank to engage in argumentation with minds that are so absolutely deprived of the ability for critical thinking, analysis and logical continuity as those with which Dawkins debates - the entire spectacle is really just comical, and does a great injustice to the scientific work he has produced. What is abhorrent, however, is the nature of his new "line of work." To see a man, whose unflenching adherance to the scientific method of discovery is so widely applauded, suddenly become engaged in arguments for and against the existence of God; to watch the spirit of Bacon, Descartes, Locke and Berkeley put to use in service of the spirits Tarsus, Augustine and Aquinas - this, my friends, is not comical in the least, but tragic.

So what is my problem with Chomsky? Well it's just this: the destruction of rational, meaningful discourse by the very mind that threw so much light on the structure, possibility and origin of rational, meaningful discourse; the rhetorical, unintelligable mashing-up of facts (to use a musical term) by a man whose best work was meant to illuminate, standardize and concretize the very concept "fact." The problem I have with Chomsky is that he has sacrificed reason to passion - and what makes it all the worse for the wear is that he has no sense of style.

I mean really: it's all good and well to renounce one's adolescent preoccupations with words in favor of more suitable "adult" themes - politics, injustice, consumerism, etc. But if one is going to commit themselves to discussing such garbage, one could at least be pretty about it.