Power of Thought.....

Before answering the second blog prompt, I chose to read through a handful of my classmates answers to the question. I felt by doing this I was not only getting a view of what others believed a public intellectual is but how they have influenced individuals. Reading these answers helped me come up with a few questions. Who is a public intellectual? How have they influenced me? These were the two questions I tried to answer when coming up with at least one individual that I not only consider a public intellectual, but an individual that has influenced my views on different issues and or events.
For me stand up comedians, are public intellectuals I have felt most influenced by. Whether they are black (Pryor, Rock, Chappelle, etc.), white (Ron White, Rogan, Burr, Loui, etc), hispanic (Francisco, Iglesias, etc.) or other, which sounds unintentionally racist. These individuals have helped to influence my views on politics, gender, and life in general. Through stand up, comedians are able to express their views on a multitude of issues. Stand-up it self is a great forum for opinion, although only one individual at a time is on stage many different opinions are expressed by many different individuals at any time. Comedians do a great job of informing people about social issues and how they affect them, and by doing so they allow you to form your own opinion on an issue. Different opinions allow everyone to feel like they apart of something bigger than themselves, as we discussed in class like opinion tends to draw people together. 

Death of the Public Intellectual?

Richard Posner's Public Intellectuals was a very interesting critique on the lost art of public intellectuals and the impact that they have had, and should continue to have on the public in regards to making informed decisions.

Before I even read Posner's views on public intellectuals, I came into it with my own view of what i believed a public intellectual to be. In a more medieval time, I felt a public intellectual was an individual who stood on a crate preaching to the masses their beliefs about how we the people must be critical of people in power (people making decisions). After reading Posner's view on public intellectuals it seems almost impossible to have public intellectuals. Not because people are incapable of being an intellectual, but because everyone has a platform to speak and preach their beliefs to the public (internet). This is not a bad thing, this just means we may need to redefine what it means to be a public intellectual.

We The Public

The definition of public life is the public service of an elected or appointed government official (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/public+life). Knowing what public life is, it allows us as individual Americans to critique the work that those we have elected have done up to this point and time. As I stated in my comment in regards to Dr. Macek's prompt, I felt that people in my generation do not take enough ownership in understanding politics in this country. By not getting involved, or at the very least having an understanding about how politics in this country work, we are letting our politicians off the hook in terms of public discourse. Politicians tend to say what people want to hear, as opposed to the hard truth, such as our economy is in the toilet and we must find ways of turning it around. By letting politicians off the hook and not holding them accountable, we are making the realms of the 'public sphere' less meaningful. For the public sphere to be meaningful, we must hold our politicians to a very high standard, and by doing so we will be reaping the benefits of meaningful and important discussions and debates out of different public sphere's. As individuals we need to pay more attention to politics not only in the United States but around the world, because at this point in our lives 'ignorance is not bliss'.