The managerial class's legitimacy is predicated on their academic pedigree, which is itself a function of the cultural prestige of the university, and that suggests a way to beat them.
Apr 26, 2022·edited Apr 26, 2022Liked by John Carter
The Humanities profs of the 80s embarked on a campaign to deconstruct and dismantle our entire inherited intellectual tradition (knowledge, culture, literature etc), plus the institutions they belonged to (and that subsidized their suburban lifestyles)--and they achieved a smashing success! (Isn't it always the case that what took centuries to build by a collection of geniuses can be destroyed in a few years by a collection of non-entities?)
And on top of that they taught any young people interested in books to always be suspicious and on the lookout for power differentials and to interrogate every text for oppressive hegemonic constructs (the writer is guilty, your job is to find out how!)--and they achieved another smashing success! Their intellectual progeny are a generation of secret police who have exchanged sex and love for the cheap thrills of policing language and narcing on political opponents.
They must be so proud of what they achieved in their sacred crusade for Equality--their children are equally stupid, equally miserable, equally subliterate, and equally committed to destroying what they can never understand or duplicate.
The deconstructors couldn't have done a better job if they'd used dynamite!
Exactly the reason why universities mandated the vaccine. This was the final filter. Anyone freethinker who would 'dare' to refuse the vaccine must be eliminated from the indoctrinated class!
Great article. The current unacknowledged aim of education is to suppress talent, especially amongst the middle and working classes, rather than develop it. As the West becomes more oligarchic the system de-prioritises development, preferring stability. The provision of quality education en masse raises expectations of recognition and reward that the system cannot meet. At the moment the system merely has too many over-credentialled young people; were they equipped with a serious education in the first place they would displace those at the top pretty quickly. Dumbing the content of education down ensures that at least the disgruntled and existentially unsatisfied can’t think clearly…a safety valve of sorts for a corrupt and unreliable elite.
The long-term cost is ruinously high, but it will be postponed beyond the lifetime of the current generation of oligarchs and their clients in the professional and managerial classes. Furthermore, in the relative absence of interstate conflict, there is limited need at the level of the nation-state for the thorough development of available human resources.
The suppression of talent is achieved through the relaxation of standards which was undertaken in the first place to enable increased participation rates.
These processes have accelerated given the need to integrate ever greater number of marginally able people into the elites and para-elites via affirmative action and have developed a momentum that has become unstoppable.
The predicament of the US and its Western allies/client-states is that the suppression of talent and the general dumbing down of the culture has exerted its influence at the highest levels. Even at the elite level standards of competence have fallen and the routine achievement of excellence has become much rarer than before.
The scene is now set for the next stage of the perpetual cycle of elites. We have been unlucky to have been born in interesting times, but in the longer term, these problems do have solutions, albeit at a terrible cost.
In conclusion, the opportunistic infection of DEI would never have taken off if the education system had been healthy and vigorous in the first place. Ghastly as it is, DEI has simply made it easier to replace or kill off exhausted institutions whose annihilation was overdue in the first place.
Here's a data point - I think more relevant to a previous entry in the series. From way down at the bottom of a recent Steve Kirch post - worth re-posting here:
= = =
The US government pays schools to push deadly drugs. Ohio State University is being paid almost $1 billion as long as they comply with the CDC vaccine guidance. This is in the public record. So if they are paying this to Ohio State, can you imagine what other schools are getting?
May 8, 2022·edited May 8, 2022Liked by John Carter
"Now, when was the last time you came across a book or a talk by a university professor that absolutely blew your mind?"
Great article, thanks. Like the rest of your DIE series. But I have had it blown away the last couple of years by the scientists associated with the ID movement (as opposed to the creationists). People like Stephen Meyer, Michael Behe, James Tour, Douglas Axe, Gunter Bechley etc.
From some of the unorthodox science you mention a couple of paragraphs down from the quote here, I wonder if you were thinking of them?
One of the first challenges is financial, as we online scholars need to somehow be able to earn a living, be comfortable enough to survive in order to produce the time we need to invest in intellectual pursuits.
At present, some of us are temporarily fortunate in this regard, but it won't be long before the system cracks down (especially in places such as Canada).
That said, what we also need I think is for novelists and writers and artists to join up with the online academics who have no interest in the current system. As the stories that are passed down by a society serve a critical role, in maintaining the beliefs and traditions as they tend to be an 'adaptation' of them. Or maybe I'm just biased because I like to write mythological stories and serial-novels.
What could also help is for larger Substacks and larger platforms to shout out, and help up the ladder the smaller ones (if only in small ways as we all do need to earn our way), and to help out where they can. In turn the smaller ones, need to support and defend the larger ones, acting like Legionaires to the Centurions that are the larger platforms. In turn though, as the smaller ones grow they need to help the next guys down in the ladder.
The trouble with the current system is that it has ingrained in people the sense that they need to knock over the ladder or otherwise pull it up, and mercilessly help only themselves. What is more is that it has ingrained in people a sense that they must resign themselves to the current system.
Intellectuals and artists are curious creatures, it is only by interaction that they've ever generated decent ideas (some can do it on their own) but generally it is by interaction and by exchanging notes that society has advanced. As no idea is born in a bubble or so I think. Lord of the Rings for example much as it was Tolkien's project, would never have become what it is without Edith Tolkien, Christopher and Lewis and the other Inklings proofreading, listening and criticising. Aragorn would have been left as the hideous Trotter rather than the Kingly figure we see in the finished project.
Just as say legally would Justinian have passed down so large a body of laws without the assistance of his supporters? Would Augustus have expanded the Roman Empire without Agrippa? And what of the scientific discoveries of the 19th century? Many of them were people coming together, tinkering together to produce some of the greatest inventions.
That said you also have intellectuals who operated very much alone such as Musashi, so I'm not saying we must eliminate individualism and individual pursuits, only that there must be a balance between both. Sorry for the long tangent really liked this article and just felt I had to explain my own thoughts on it. Hope you don't mind the novel sized reply.
The Humanities profs of the 80s embarked on a campaign to deconstruct and dismantle our entire inherited intellectual tradition (knowledge, culture, literature etc), plus the institutions they belonged to (and that subsidized their suburban lifestyles)--and they achieved a smashing success! (Isn't it always the case that what took centuries to build by a collection of geniuses can be destroyed in a few years by a collection of non-entities?)
And on top of that they taught any young people interested in books to always be suspicious and on the lookout for power differentials and to interrogate every text for oppressive hegemonic constructs (the writer is guilty, your job is to find out how!)--and they achieved another smashing success! Their intellectual progeny are a generation of secret police who have exchanged sex and love for the cheap thrills of policing language and narcing on political opponents.
They must be so proud of what they achieved in their sacred crusade for Equality--their children are equally stupid, equally miserable, equally subliterate, and equally committed to destroying what they can never understand or duplicate.
The deconstructors couldn't have done a better job if they'd used dynamite!
Exactly the reason why universities mandated the vaccine. This was the final filter. Anyone freethinker who would 'dare' to refuse the vaccine must be eliminated from the indoctrinated class!
Great article. The current unacknowledged aim of education is to suppress talent, especially amongst the middle and working classes, rather than develop it. As the West becomes more oligarchic the system de-prioritises development, preferring stability. The provision of quality education en masse raises expectations of recognition and reward that the system cannot meet. At the moment the system merely has too many over-credentialled young people; were they equipped with a serious education in the first place they would displace those at the top pretty quickly. Dumbing the content of education down ensures that at least the disgruntled and existentially unsatisfied can’t think clearly…a safety valve of sorts for a corrupt and unreliable elite.
The long-term cost is ruinously high, but it will be postponed beyond the lifetime of the current generation of oligarchs and their clients in the professional and managerial classes. Furthermore, in the relative absence of interstate conflict, there is limited need at the level of the nation-state for the thorough development of available human resources.
The suppression of talent is achieved through the relaxation of standards which was undertaken in the first place to enable increased participation rates.
These processes have accelerated given the need to integrate ever greater number of marginally able people into the elites and para-elites via affirmative action and have developed a momentum that has become unstoppable.
The predicament of the US and its Western allies/client-states is that the suppression of talent and the general dumbing down of the culture has exerted its influence at the highest levels. Even at the elite level standards of competence have fallen and the routine achievement of excellence has become much rarer than before.
The scene is now set for the next stage of the perpetual cycle of elites. We have been unlucky to have been born in interesting times, but in the longer term, these problems do have solutions, albeit at a terrible cost.
In conclusion, the opportunistic infection of DEI would never have taken off if the education system had been healthy and vigorous in the first place. Ghastly as it is, DEI has simply made it easier to replace or kill off exhausted institutions whose annihilation was overdue in the first place.
Here's a data point - I think more relevant to a previous entry in the series. From way down at the bottom of a recent Steve Kirch post - worth re-posting here:
= = =
The US government pays schools to push deadly drugs. Ohio State University is being paid almost $1 billion as long as they comply with the CDC vaccine guidance. This is in the public record. So if they are paying this to Ohio State, can you imagine what other schools are getting?
= =
https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/what-i-learned-on-my-trip-to-the?s=r
"Now, when was the last time you came across a book or a talk by a university professor that absolutely blew your mind?"
Great article, thanks. Like the rest of your DIE series. But I have had it blown away the last couple of years by the scientists associated with the ID movement (as opposed to the creationists). People like Stephen Meyer, Michael Behe, James Tour, Douglas Axe, Gunter Bechley etc.
From some of the unorthodox science you mention a couple of paragraphs down from the quote here, I wonder if you were thinking of them?
I want to learn to be like a free tenant peasant, surely beneath the plugged noses of those in the sterilized class.
John, imagine what historians of the future will write, if they get the chance.
DOUBLE BRAVO on the series!
One of the first challenges is financial, as we online scholars need to somehow be able to earn a living, be comfortable enough to survive in order to produce the time we need to invest in intellectual pursuits.
At present, some of us are temporarily fortunate in this regard, but it won't be long before the system cracks down (especially in places such as Canada).
That said, what we also need I think is for novelists and writers and artists to join up with the online academics who have no interest in the current system. As the stories that are passed down by a society serve a critical role, in maintaining the beliefs and traditions as they tend to be an 'adaptation' of them. Or maybe I'm just biased because I like to write mythological stories and serial-novels.
What could also help is for larger Substacks and larger platforms to shout out, and help up the ladder the smaller ones (if only in small ways as we all do need to earn our way), and to help out where they can. In turn the smaller ones, need to support and defend the larger ones, acting like Legionaires to the Centurions that are the larger platforms. In turn though, as the smaller ones grow they need to help the next guys down in the ladder.
The trouble with the current system is that it has ingrained in people the sense that they need to knock over the ladder or otherwise pull it up, and mercilessly help only themselves. What is more is that it has ingrained in people a sense that they must resign themselves to the current system.
Intellectuals and artists are curious creatures, it is only by interaction that they've ever generated decent ideas (some can do it on their own) but generally it is by interaction and by exchanging notes that society has advanced. As no idea is born in a bubble or so I think. Lord of the Rings for example much as it was Tolkien's project, would never have become what it is without Edith Tolkien, Christopher and Lewis and the other Inklings proofreading, listening and criticising. Aragorn would have been left as the hideous Trotter rather than the Kingly figure we see in the finished project.
Just as say legally would Justinian have passed down so large a body of laws without the assistance of his supporters? Would Augustus have expanded the Roman Empire without Agrippa? And what of the scientific discoveries of the 19th century? Many of them were people coming together, tinkering together to produce some of the greatest inventions.
That said you also have intellectuals who operated very much alone such as Musashi, so I'm not saying we must eliminate individualism and individual pursuits, only that there must be a balance between both. Sorry for the long tangent really liked this article and just felt I had to explain my own thoughts on it. Hope you don't mind the novel sized reply.