Guest Post by The Zman
Since the 1960’s, maybe earlier, the American academy has said that America is an anti-intellectual country. I first heard this said when I was a freshman in college. A professor said that America does not have academics or experts in politics like Europeans. Instead, intellectuals are kept locked up in the academy. This opinion appears to have formed in the post war years and became an article of faith in the 60’s. This was all before my time, but it strikes me as something the Boomers would have cooked up.
I always associate this attitude with the false worldliness that is common on the Left, particularly among Progressive politicians.The Clintons were two hayseeds from the Ozarks, but they carried on as if they were citizens of the world. Obama has a habit of pronouncing foreign words with the foreign accent associated with the word. He was raised abroad and never picked up the basics of another language, just the funny accents, like a bad comic from the 70’s.
Americans are anti-intellectual, but very much pro-expert. Foreigners often remark on this weird quirk, which is an English habit we inherited from the mother country. The Brits are nuts about experts. Have a problem around the house? Go find a man in a shed, who is a specialist at that particular problem. We have a bias against generalist and we have bias in favor of the practical application of knowledge. Learning a bunch of esoteric stuff just for the sake of learning it strikes most Americans as a bit pointless and dishonest.
When it comes to the topic of anti-intellectualism, the focus should be on the chattering classes, which in America operates as the megaphone for public policy experts. The vast managerial class that controls all aspects of society listens to these people. Most Americans, for example, don’t bother watching the chat shows and cable news channels, other than when something big happens. On the other hand, the managerial class, particularly the vast army of government bureaucrats, pay close attention.
It’s why the chattering skulls appear to live in a bubble, divorced from what is happening in America. Their lives are devoted to those who pay attention to them. They write and talk about what they know to people who live and work in politics. It’s why Charles Murray is treated like Marco Polo by the managerial class. He is one of the few to wander off campus and visit the country. His observations about Americans are read like Jonathan Swift, by the intended audience. Most probably think he is a fiction writer.
This obtuseness is everywhere in the chattering classes. This post I saw on NR reads like a parody. The guy who wrote it gives off a Rip Van Winkle vibe, as if he has been asleep for the last few decades. The PC terror campaigns waged in corporations and on social media are well documented. The people in the chattering classes, on the other hand, are just noticing. The article that is the subject of the post is worse. It reads like an essay for the Efficiency Society. Someone should send him Vox Day’s book.
This post, by the retired Marxist Ron Radosh, is another example of the insularity of the chattering classes. He is long past his expiry date so maybe he can be forgiven for not noticing that those “conservatives” are not conservative. They are Trotskyites just like him. They wandered over to the GOP because they feared the return of the Tsar, but otherwise, they retained all of their Progressive inclinations. The only people unaware of this are those in the chattering classes.
It is not just the B and C level talking heads. This post by big shot libertarian economist Tyler Cowen is a master work of juvenile vacuity. His great incite is that people don’t like paying for their own health care. He thinks Democrats are refusing to acknowledge this. Everything about the Democrat Party over the last century has been based on the free lunch, yet Cowen suspects they are trying to hide this from us. Cowen is a sheep in sheep’s clothing, by posing as an intellectual pretending to be an anti-intellectual.
Wu Zetian is credited with expanding and developing the imperial exam system during the Zhou dynasty. Wu could also be considered the first power-skirt, or perhaps the first power-gown. The exam system was used to recruit and train the best and brightest to work in the imperial administration. During the Song dynasty, the system was formalized throughout China. It was highly competitive, as it was the only way for an ambitious person to gain status in Chinese society. China became a land of scholar-bureaucrats.
The system also became increasing narrow, rewarding the memorization of select philosophical texts, to the exclusion of more practical knowledge. The result was a boiling off of the curious and critical. The one sure way to lose your place was to ask questions or be too curious. The system was great at promoting and enforcing conformity, but it resulted in a ruling class lacking the necessary technical skills to constructively address the world. It resulted in a ruling class that prized not noticing above all else.
A good example of how this warped the Chinese intellectual class, is the story of the first telescope brought to China by Western missionaries. The Chinese were duly impressed, but instead of using to understand the heavens, they wanted to use it for better fortune telling. This story is often cited as an example of how centuries of mandatory conformity can cripple an otherwise smart people. It is also often cited by modern population geneticist as an example of what is happening today with genetics.
Pulling the threads together, what seems to be happening in our chattering classes, and our academic classes as well, is a narrowing of thought to the point where the most prized ability is never looking up from the approved text. You cannot comment about the fly on your friend’s face if you never look at his face. In order to achieve unity and collegiality, our managerial class is adopting a monocular political ideology that screens out applicants at the college level, and boils off non-conformists, who slip by the gate keepers.
Again, it is ironic that the person credited with the imperial exam system was a woman, given that the modern exam system is increasingly dominated by women. It used to be that college was for men to acquire skills. Now it is a place for women to learn the rules and how to enforce them. It’s not a surprise that our intellectuals, the chattering classes, are increasingly blinkered. Rare is the scholar who possess anything resembling useful skills. Instead, they memorize the rules and how to cleverly restate them.
The imperial exam system served China well, but only after she conquered all of her neighbors and unified the Han people. The system was about locking in the gains of the past. What that says about the modern managerial class is open to debate. Perhaps they are solidifying control as globalism supersedes the nation state. Perhaps, like we see in modern business, the arrival of the SJW signals collapse. Regardless, we seem to be heading for anti-intellectualism, driven by the product of the managerial exam system.
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Knew a guy who coined “the myth of expertism.” I think the truth of expertism, or most of it anyway, has to do with the desire to push off responsibility onto someone else. I’ll take Creedence over credentials, most days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T00eJSQimIk
The Zman said:
“…big shot libertarian economist Tyler Cowen…”
The Zman is at it again. Another drive-by smear of Libertarians!
Tyler Cowen is a libertarian apostate folks!
Tyler Cowen is a strong critic of Austrian and Rothbardian views. He even published a book that sharply attacks Austrian business cycle theory, and he has criticized libertarian anarchism. He even rates Ludwig von Mises poorly. The Zman either knows this to be the case, or he’s just ignorant. Personally, I think it’s the former!
Tyler Cowen is NO libertarian. Tyler Cowen is a neo-liberal, Charles Koch trained and funded poodle!
The Zman claims Tyler Cowen is a “Libertarian.” If Tyler Cowen is a libertarian… Rachel Dolezal is black!
Attaboy Zman. Keep the smears coming.
When they smear you, they fear you.
I applied to the USAF OSI to become a Spy Tech; they did a background on me and called me in to tell me no. I asked why and the guy said: “You think for yourself and we only want people who follow orders.” Either you are a good Illuminati Minion or you don’t get the scholarship, job, good assignment or promotion. We are now an Affirmative Action ex-Meritocracy sliding into 1984.
rhs….I and two other officers were interviewed by a General (in Saigon) about making a career in the Army. I always remember the General stating “we want yes men”.
That convinced me to get out.
It must be significant that you wrote – “I and two other..” It looks like you tend to put yourself first, Sarge.
What else do you fantasize about?
Winning an argument on TBP, just one. The loser would admit, “You’re the best, Coyote. Even though you have less than an 85 IQ, you make up for that with irrefutable logic. I shall go now and never darken this illustrious site again, so long as I live.”
Arguments, valid ones in valid discussions without ego driving them, don’t have winners and losers.
They have outcomes resolving the conflict of the argument.
Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis (valid outcome replacing the Thesis and becoming the new one in its place)
Thesis + Antithesis + Ego ≠ Synthesis (no valid outcome, still conflicting Thesis and Antithesis)
“Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis” according to Hegel and his Frankfurt School disciples. Try “Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis = Moving the Overton Window in Your Favor By Artificial and Abstract Dialectical Means”. Sometimes the thesis is a perfectly valid outcome, sometimes the contrary. Some truths simply don’t require parsing.
That’s just so much bullshit, Anonymous, we all negotiate our way through life arguing for ourselves to get what we want.
Otherwise, we are no more than a human carpet at the beck and call of everybody who demands of us obedience and subservience.
I’m sure you never argue but for the sake of truth and justice, you never get laid either.
Damn intellectuals.
Not even tonsils, gall bladders, appendixes are vestigial. But egoectomy? That’s RP McMurphy after his failure to complete Ratched’s throttling.
Trial+error=possibly, but not necessarily, some incremental synthesis.
Overtons window…is that what defenestrators throw\jump out of?
forgetful, he managed to castrate the castrating bitch. She didn’t have the same control over the inmates and staff as before. Sometimes folks need to be cut down a notch. People have a natural aversion to despots. The bitch liked to keep her subjects drugged and everybody else fooled. RPM saw clearly that she was the real bull-goose loonie.
A classmate of mine once said, “my lack of knowledge ( one whatever topic) is exceeded only by my lack of interest.
One should avoid quoting idiots henceforth – Neil Dunn
The content of your quote suggests you do not comprehend the message you convey.
They do it all the time, Maggie. I guess they know not what they do not know and even less of what they think they know.
When I meet someone who thinks they (or their favorite hero) are smart enough to manage the society, I ask how their stock portfolio is doing. I also invite them to call the cards before they look at the hands I deal them. After all with 52 cards, dealing five card hands, there is only 2,598,960 combinations.
Calling cards or taming the market should be a snap for someone who can micromanage the outcome of every personal/business interaction in the country.
A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry.
Hence University education.
George Bernard Shaw
literacy means insight not incite. Duh
Until that literacy inspires inciteful behavior. Then, perhaps, the two merge.
Until that literacy incites insight. Then, perhaps, the two merge.
In the 1950s, Robert Maynard Hutchins, for example, argued that America had a problem with “anti-intellectualism.” He argued that, at the height of the British Empire, the British civil service personnel had all studied Plato and Aristotle at Oxford, and they could communicate ideas with that background as frame of reference. However, in America, Hutchins said, ideas were judged by popularity contest.
So, anti-intellectualism was determined by how ideas were treated. For example, imagine two tents, one for those who think the sky is blue, and one for those who think the sky is gray. A counter can measure the number of people in each tent. No debate about whether the sky is blue or gray is necessary to determine an outcome. If more people occupy the sky is blue tent, then the sky can be said to be blue.
Is anti-intellectualism a problem? Well, when a president says his ideas are superior because his events get higher television ratings than the opposition and draw bigger crowds, then perhaps. Notice what the crowd at an event of this kind does: first, they yay, then they boo. Yay, boo, repeat, as led by the speaker. That is not an intellectual enterprise. It is a process of adopting ideas entirely by operation of feelings or emotion, and this is not always obvious to the participants. This is not to say the crowd is always wrong or more often wrong than right, but there is a place for intellectual debate and argumentation.
Over-reliance on experts is unwise, but so is under-reliance on experts. True experts just know more in their fields. It is the fake experts that are dangerous and destructive.
The problem is that credentialed experts too often are opaque. Their designations first purpose is to shield them from the market. “Customers” are presented with a homogenized front. No way to really compare\contrast, get rid of the deadwood. A lot of experts are like a lot of professors: tenured, coasting, laurel resting, made guys\gals. No or little skin in the game. Incentives wrongly privatized & “externalities” socialized. Incentives should all revolve around serving customers, but instead, the incentives are about neutering customers. Steers are easier to steer. Barrows are easier to wheelbarrow. But steers & barrows aren’t customers – they’re product. Open air comrade citizen serfs are product. Prisoners in pen(itentiarie)s are product. Bread. & butter. Fe-fi-fo-fum. Cannibalism•yum.
The problem with “credentialed experts” is that often their credentials mean nothing. Foreign policy, military incursions, intelligence gathering and economics run by idiots who have a degree, but have never done more than that.
When a “credentialed expert” says “Theoretically…” it’s like a Second Lieutenant saying “In my experience…”
Aye, but meaningless credentials that aren’t subsidy-shielded behind color of law cartels – opacity, the wizard’s curtain, the emperor’s robes – do not, cannot, survive the tests of competition. Competition is the offense that’s the best defense.
Anti-competition types are all out for free lunches, which is to say lunches at someone else’s expense.
At least 2nd lt’s, in certain contexts, can be fragged.
CAFO’d civilians are buffalo’d meat & milk, horns sawed off, being moved along Temple Grandin’s mood smoothing spiral chutes toward Anton Chigurh, PhD, types holding captive bolt pistols. Much suckery & compressed air out there.
The problem as my poor mechanical mind can perceive is : they all sound and look smart enough , I wonder if any of them ever did an honest day’s work ?
I notice many younger highly educated people become frustrated even angry if something does not wind up and fly out of the box . Patient thought and perhaps some quality time reading the instructions . My favorite paper in a system I installed numerous times in big bold letters before you try it your way , read this and do it our way !
Many times after successful installs where the system was tested running and ready to go , a few days later my phone would ring and as usual after a few questions I knew the customer barely read and understood the “QUICK START GUIDE” . There is no out of the box thinking these days , as a trained experienced trouble shooter I spend most of my life out of that preverible box . Still fixing and making things work for people way more educated than I . Some are nice some are miserable frustrated shits . Such is the way of our world today but it’s coming to a cataclismic end . As always it’s not the fall , it’s the sudden stop !
Exactly, sweat and getting your hands dirty (whether metaphorically or in fact) doesn’t register.
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas Edison
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like a lez.
– Neil-stick a fork in him-Dunn
We buy things (for cheap) from thrift stores. Sometimes, you can find entire pieces of furniture from IKEA, packaging still intact or barely opened and hastily resealed – someone bought something they could not figure out how to assemble, despite the instructions. Picked up a sofa for about $35 that way.
We are becoming a country of mechanical imbeciles – where once teenagers rebuilt cars, now adults can’t put four legs and a cover on a piece of furniture. Where once garage mechanics could tune an engine, now owners can’t change the oil.
This doesn’t bode well for continued civilization. Also, I don’t find most Americans are anti-intellectual: if they are interested in a subject, they will study it to their heart’s content, be it photography, stained-glass working or machining metals on a lathe. What they are against is FALSE intellectuals, the kind that get a degree in _____ Studies and then try to tell everyone how to live – as their children decay into thugs, their spouses cheat on them and their theories slump into dust. Why should I listen to someone whose own life is such a mess?
Let me expand on that. The problem also is that now those ‘credentials’ have become a product, just like everything else. These ‘colleges’ are just selling a piece of paper, and the ‘hiring’ HR managers only hire ‘credentialed’ people. When intelligence is bought and sold, under false pretense, this is what it gets you.
Most IT people, good ones anyway, know this to be fact. That is why most of the really good programmers and innovators in tech have little, if ANY college experience. They also, BTW skip the HR ‘job’ route and end up simply starting their own company or consulting.
Funny how the managers of these ‘credential requiring’ companies pay huge consulting fees to non credentialed consultants….