Why Hyperfixation on Accessibility Fails: In Defense of Inclusive Elitism
Philosophy and theology are more akin to poetry than to any form of purely informational communication; accessibility of prose is but one possible desirable feature to these sorts of works, but not the master value nor a default. The beauty of language, the novelty of expression, the particularity of communication — these too are all intrinsically valuable and there are times when we rightly prioritize these over making the language as frictionless as possible.
Good poetry forces you to slow down and grapple with the words, the phrases, the imagery. It makes you marinate in the cadence, the swirl of phonemes. You need to sit with this all and even wrestle with it at times. But then, if it is rich poetry, if you have made this effort, and there is a synergy between your soul and the poem — then something poignant comes from this encounter. Something that could never have been achieved by communication that privileges accessibility above all else. The murkiness of the language, the openness of the images, the fact that the meanings aren’t right at your fingertips — these are all necessary ingredients in what makes poetry beautiful, intense, and worthwhile.
Have you ever been camping and cooked some crummy food with shoddy tools over a crude fire? What you end up eating is burnt, unevenly cooked, maybe under-seasoned… And it’s absolutely glorious. Something about the fact that the meal was hard won and really engaged your efforts and this is where the richness and enjoyment comes from.
To reduce ideas to communication of information is a very tragic reduction stemming from some of the less savory sides of the modern worldview. I was considering formatting this next sentence as a question, but I’ll just boldly state it instead: many things of the deepest existential and intellectual value originate in real exertion, grappling, and deep relationship with certain ideas, questions, streams of thought, etc. If you’ve had a queasy feeling when someone says they learned about X or Y thing that you care deeply about through asking ChatGPT, you have an intuition of this perspective. Even if accurate and relatively well-summarized, simply having a large language model regurgitate basic information about a subject can never be a replacement for the actual encounter that happens when you’re really, existentially thinking through something — and often, dense, unique, arcane, novel, and irreducibly particular language is an AID to this kind of deep wrestling and encounter, not antithetical to it. Even more strongly: to always privilege accessibility, without also saving space for digging around in the dirt until you are drenched in sweat, sore, and bleeding (so to speak), is a disservice to the depth and capaciousness of the human spirit. And we need more spirit, not less, in our times.
Neurologically: doing this kind of real intellectual work and wrestling with an idea, a question, etc. literally does different things in your brain than simply taking in digestible summaries of the same material. It forces new connections to be made (literally, materially!) and these connections may very well be unique to you and your thought — it is YOUR brain after all, not just some blank slate information processing machine. This sort of hard intellectual work is a sort of neuro-permaculture, where you are helping to cultivate a diverse and interdependent mental ecology. Only through this kind of real encounter, real exertion, can genuine niche construction happen, and this is what supports a diverse, flourishing ecosystem. Zooming out from the metaphor: you can only really become a dynamic, creative, and existentially poignant thinker — something I would consider crucially important for human beings — by putting in the hard work to grapple with intrinsically complex ideas and poignant, unique, and layered expressions of these ideas.
Popularization, attempts to make difficult material more accessible: Yes! Of course this has a place. Not everyone can devote significant energy to everything they are curious about but it is great to be able to dip one’s toes in nonetheless. However, this is never a REPLACEMENT for deep encounter. Reading the Sparknotes for a great novel is QUALITATIVELY different than reading the novel itself.
The best popularizations are so excellent because they are compelling invitations into real intellectual encounters — they ignite a spark that motivates individuals in the audience to dive in and invest their energies into digging into intrinsically difficult material. A popularization which does not attempt to ignite this spark and instead simply functions as an “overview” disconnects itself from the artistry and spiritual vigor of intellectual life. How tragic!
Yes, there is hot garbage out there that comes in the form of unnecessarily verbose, complex, and arcane prose. Yes, you need to make judgement calls about material that comes in this form and whether or not you want to dedicate the energy to find out if there is really something behind it. That’s life. BUT! The fact that something is difficult to penetrate is not automatically a bug or a negative: it may even be a huge asset for those who dedicate themselves to really getting into the thought-world of whatever it is. It would be ridiculous to say “just speak in plain language!” in response to a poem and I would argue the same here.
Far more than this sort of trash, however, exists the inverse sort of garbage, which receives far less attention culturally: “accessible” treatments of topics which feature inaccuracies, distort the ideas and questions, and dilute the vigor of what they are trying to popularize. This sort of media is like a direct injection of a Dunning-Kruger amphetamine into the commons. If we are concerned about accessibility (and I don’t disagree that this is a worthy aim), we should likewise be concerned with how over-fixating on this virtue leads to bad outcomes that do not serve to nourish individual human spirits or contribute to the intellectual edification of communities, society, etc. Too much frictionlessness increases the likelihood of injury by slipping and falling — i.e. intellectual arrogance that leads to hardheadedness and conflict.
More than ensuring accessibility, I want to encourage a culture of invitation into these difficult but worthwhile intellectual encounters — a culture of deep fellowship and mutual sharing in such ventures. This kind of rich intellectual wayfaring is what we need more of, not accessible information — the internet has already solved that one to a great extent. My vision is one of an open, egalitarian sort of elitism — all are invited and proactive efforts are made towards initiation, but expectations remain focused on rigor, depth, continuity of lineage, etc. Organic, communal support, tailored to individual and collective interests, concerns, and difficulties is a top priority and an extremely valuable opportunity. This sort of proactive, relational learning community which achieves accessibility, not through diluting the material, but through elevating the learners individually and collectively, will always be worth more than some informational treatment of a topic.
My call: a renewed celebration of rigor and difficulty in intellectual life. This ought not be automatically subservient to the value of accessibility. Though we do, urgently, need a collaborative and communal culture of deep learning that facilitates this level of existential and intellectual encounter for ever-widening human collectives.
