The inferior man’s reasons for hating knowledge are not hard to discern. He hates it because it is complex—because it puts an unbearable burden upon his meagre capacity to take in ideas. Thus his search is always for short cuts. All superstitions are short cuts. Their aim is to make the unintelligible simple, and even obvious. So on what seem to be higher levels. No man who has not had a long and arduous education can understand even the most elementary concepts of modern pathology. But even a hind at the plough can grasp the theory of chiropractic in two lessons. Hence the vast popularity of chiropractic among the submerged—and of osteopathy, Christian Science and other such quackeries with it. They are idiotic, but they are simple—and every man prefers what he can understand to what puzzles and dismays him.
The popularity of fundamentalism among the inferior orders of men is explicable in exactly the same way. The cosmogenies that educated men toy with are all inordinately complex. To comprehend their veriest outlines requires an immense stock of knowledge, and a habit of thought. It would be be as vain to try to teach the peasants or to the city proletariat as it would be to try to teach them to streptococci. But the cosmogeny of Genesis is so simple that even a yokel can grasp it. It is set forth in a few phrases. It offers, to an ignorant man, the irresistible reasonableness of the nonsensical. So he accepts it with loud hosannas, and has one more excuse for hating his betters.
Alternate hypothesis: the inferior man hates knowledge because “Yay knowledge!” is associated with people like Mencken, who go around calling people things like “inferior man” because they’re poor and uneducated.
I understood the quote as speaking of those that are incapable of understanding rather than those who could be educated or walked through to understanding so I’m not sure why this would apply. He is definitely elitist but I’ve never heard of him scoff at the idea of talent coming from poverty. Also overall even people who are capable of such tought often carry culture and values that inhibit it and don’t wish to change them no more than you want to change yours. When he speaks of the peasants or the city proletariat, he is speaking of a great mass of people many of which are on the left of the bell curve, not about individuals.
You do have a point that overall upper class and even upper middle class people underestimate how many poor smart people there are. Mencken overall was very critical of the upper class as well, he was basically pessimistic about the potential of everyone, except the rare individual exception.
“He is definitely elitist but I’ve never heard of him scoff at the idea of talent coming from poverty. ”
Elitists often make a point of not scoffing at the idea of talent coming from poverty. When poor people attain great success, it helps to justify the elitist’s belief that their own success had nothing to do with the privileges they had access to (i.e. comfortable living, proper nutrition, and good educational material).
H. L. Mencken, Homo Neanderthalensis
Alternate hypothesis: the inferior man hates knowledge because “Yay knowledge!” is associated with people like Mencken, who go around calling people things like “inferior man” because they’re poor and uneducated.
I understood the quote as speaking of those that are incapable of understanding rather than those who could be educated or walked through to understanding so I’m not sure why this would apply. He is definitely elitist but I’ve never heard of him scoff at the idea of talent coming from poverty. Also overall even people who are capable of such tought often carry culture and values that inhibit it and don’t wish to change them no more than you want to change yours. When he speaks of the peasants or the city proletariat, he is speaking of a great mass of people many of which are on the left of the bell curve, not about individuals.
You do have a point that overall upper class and even upper middle class people underestimate how many poor smart people there are. Mencken overall was very critical of the upper class as well, he was basically pessimistic about the potential of everyone, except the rare individual exception.
“He is definitely elitist but I’ve never heard of him scoff at the idea of talent coming from poverty. ”
Elitists often make a point of not scoffing at the idea of talent coming from poverty. When poor people attain great success, it helps to justify the elitist’s belief that their own success had nothing to do with the privileges they had access to (i.e. comfortable living, proper nutrition, and good educational material).
Do you mean “hand”?
I think Mencken was using it in the sense of, “A peasant; a rustic; a farm servant.”, (see also). It’s an unusual usage.