A Necessary Evil

Give five dollars to your local church.  Donate a car to someone in need.  Send a check to a school in any third world country.  Try to “change the world.”  Yet, doing any one of these small deeds can still leave a donor feeling a tremendous lack of effectiveness, an inescapable feeling of uselessness, wasting time and money.  Voice this concern however, and the instantaneous rebuke is that the small charity is a part of a chain.  The smallest actions result in a chain of good that ultimately makes life better for those affected by the gesture.  The mere presence of charitable acts, is a world of difference all together.  Charity makes our civilizations more advanced, more affluent and more successful simply by its presence.

The public intellectual, as defined in Stephen Mack’s post “The ‘Decline’ of the Public Intellectual,” serves this same purpose.  While it is not charity, and it does not serve the same connotations, the function it has is the same. 

           

Trained to it or not, all participants in self-government are duty-bound to prod, poke, and pester the powerful institutions that would shape their lives. And so if public intellectuals have any role to play in a democracy—and they do—it’s simply to keep the pot boiling. The measure of public intellectual work is not whether the people are listening, but whether they’re hearing things worth talking about.

By being the source of societal commentary, public intellectuals serve their purpose merely by their existence. Moreover, while they may not reform society, each is a vital link in a chain of academics who will facilitate the initial discussion around any topic, no matter the negativity required.   

Evidence of the chain that connects the efforts of all public intellectuals comes from media critic Lawrence Lessig.  While a simple example of what happens to all public intellectuals over the course of time, Lessig has hung up his own criticism blog at Lessig.org.  A blog known for long criticism and insightful looks into litigation, literature and business of media, Lessig.org is losing its only contributor due to, well, life.  Citing the arrival of another child and his increasing professional responsibilities, Lessig.org’s piece of the Lawrence Lessig public intellectual brand is lost. 

While Lessig will continue to flex his influence in the media world as a public intellectual, the closing of the Lessig.org blog reminds us that the role of this community is to be present in any media, and any changes that come to society aren’t as important as the presence of the criticism.  Like charity, public intellectuals make our make our civilizations more advanced, more affluent and more successful simply by their presence.  It is a necessary source of criticism, and some would go as far to call it “a necessary evil.”