Since I have time on my hands, I started something I won't be able to finish for a long time. I started reading another physical book. The book that supposedly inspired the audio book I'm in the middle of by Susan Jacoby, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter. I read slooooow, so I'm still in the introduction, but some things have already stood out. Following is from page 29...

The very suggestion that the intellectual has a distinctive capacity for mischief, however, leads to the consideration that his piety, by itself, is not enough. He may live for ideas, as I have said, but something must prevent him from living for one idea, from becoming obsessive or grotesque. Although there have been zealots whom we may still regard as intellectuals, zealotry is a defect of the breed and not of the essence. When one's concern for ideas, no matter how dedicated and sincere, reduces them to the service of some central limited preconception or some wholly external end, intellect gets swallowed by fanaticism. 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 effect is as observable in politics as in theology: the intellectual function can be overwhelmed by an excess of piety expended within too contracted a frame of reference.

This notion I think is dead on. One quality of religious people I always find irritating is the assumption their dedication somehow lends legitimacy to their actions and assertions. This is then subverted to the users own ends, rather than the supposed ends of the message, and any suggestion otherwise is taken as an unacceptable affront, and taken to extremes we are subjected to the antics of fanatics, an example of which is evident with Islam, or any religion that assumes it's ideas should

But in our time, of course, American society has grown greatly in complexity and in involvement with the rest of the world. In most areas of life a formal training has become a prerequisite to success. At the same time, the complexity of modern life has steadily whittled away the functions the ordinary citizen can intelligently and comprehendingly perform for himself. In the original American populistic dream, the omnicompetence of the common man was fundamental and indispensable. It was believed that he could, without much special preparation, pursue the professions and run the government. Today he knows that he cannot even make his breakfast without using devices, more or less mysterious to him, which expertise has put at his disposal; and when he sits down to breakfast and looks at his morning newspaper, he reads about a whole range of vital and intricate issues and acknowledges, if his is candid with himself, that he has not acquired competence to judge most of them.

In the practical world of affairs, then, trained intelligence has come to be recognized as a force of overwhelming importance.

I should have comments to provide about these quotes, but nothing I can come up with at the moment, as it is getting late, and sleepiness is gumming up the works even more so than they already are.