[HN Gopher] Educated Fools
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Educated Fools
Author : wonderment
Score : 54 points
Date : 2020-02-01 01:48 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newrepublic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newrepublic.com)
| baryphonic wrote:
| > There is no foothold left in big cities, or anyplace else where
| the global winners live, for high school graduates to exercise
| even a tiny bit of power. There's no church to slot into as a
| deacon, no chance on the shop floor to rise as a foreman, no
| union in which to become a shop steward or officeholder, no big-
| city political machine that in this digital age needs anyone to
| go door to door. Our wage workers have been stripped of every way
| to exercise the kind of morality or have the opportunities that
| come so easily to the top fifth. At least in the case of the
| Industrial Revolution, as described by E.P. Thompson in The
| Making of the English Working Class, there was religion--the new
| Methodist faith that gave the English working class a sense of
| moral superiority over their owners. But in the working class
| remade and discarded for the postindustrial age, there is an
| uptick in drug abuse, one-parent families, and indebtedness. The
| top fifth of the country, the most educated, may well be more
| moral--and, God knows, even more religious in terms of actual
| Christian values--than the current white working class. But that,
| too, represents another form of class oppression, worse than in
| the Industrial Revolution--the top fifth have appropriated all
| the morality.
|
| I've never seen an article that is simultaneously semi-self-aware
| yet contains such a high level of arrogance and condescension.
| That on its own makes it an interesting piece.
| watwut wrote:
| It is interestingly skipping period after 1832 (where The
| Making of the English Working Class ends) and now. The social
| problems were quite large and very real.
| krnsll wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this. The piece makes an urgent point that
| needs to be appropriately acknowledged. It falls in the vein of
| arguments I've come to term as "relational poverty" or
| "relational inequality" arguments (what Popper is presented as
| terming "moral inequality" in the piece) that most social science
| research I've come across has failed to or is ill-equipped to
| account for. I do recall Amartya Sen making a definition of
| poverty along these grounds (in the sense of dignity, or lack
| thereof, in what one perceives as their social environment) some
| years back but haven't been able to trace it down since or see if
| any further work was done on it. (If someone reading this happens
| to know more about such work, I'd appreciate being directed
| towards it).
|
| The point made about Trump expressing a liking for poorly
| educated folk is also noteworthy. Even if the more sensible in
| the political class come to acknowledge the paradox we face, the
| matter of articulating and expressing it appropriately arises.
| Currently, as the author notes, the "college for all" approach
| doesn't appear to be resonating electorally (that said, there are
| a number of confounding factors one could put forth) but rather
| is serving as a reminder to the once robust (perhaps this is
| romantic nostalgia) working- and lower-middle-classes of their
| lowered social standing and relational dignity.
| paganel wrote:
| > This all fits the claim of the French geographer Christophe
| Guilluy about his own country in his 2016 book The Twilight of
| the Elites: Prosperity, the Periphery, and the Future of France.
|
| +1 for Christophe Guilluy's book, it's really eye-opening, even
| more so considering that he wrote/published it even before the
| "gilets jaunes" movement started.
|
| Not sure there's a solution for this "periphery" problem, but I
| see it in my parts of the world (Eastern-European country and EU
| member), it certainly is present in France and I suppose in other
| Western European countries, and according to the article is also
| a real problem in the US.
| woodandsteel wrote:
| Conservatives are split about the changes the article discribes.
| Traditional conservatives are glad the labor movement was
| destroyed, and see the Knowledge Economy as good because it is
| the latest product of the unrestrained free market.
|
| On the other hand, Trump supporters are very angry, but the
| problem is that Trump's program won't do anything at all to fix
| the problems that are making them unhappy.
| salt-licker wrote:
| Great article that exposes many college-educated blind spots, in
| particular that education is not a panacea for inequality. But
| the proposed solution of more democratic workplaces -- somehow
| convincing capital-holders that investing in human labor rather
| than automation is in their own self-interest -- feels like
| swimming against the tide of history.
|
| Meritocracy is a dangerous ideal for humanity to continue to hold
| so dearly. IQ is partially genetic, and with a low ceiling --
| sooner than we're ready to accept, nobody's brain will hold a
| candle to AI. Equating our economic value with moral worth will
| only lead to further cultural division, despair, and anarcho-
| primitivism. Instead, let's try to build a culture, society, and
| government that takes the intrinsic value of human life as an
| axiom, before it's too late.
| alexashka wrote:
| Can someone translate this into:
|
| Perceived problem, attempted solutions, potential new solution.
|
| I have no idea what the hell the article is going on about - it
| reads like a rant by a typical politically active idiot.
| wonderment wrote:
| I know it's maybe too political for HN but I found this article
| more interesting than expected.
|
| Its main idea is "the loss of social standing, social claims, the
| social assets that working people used to have, because, in our
| time, education is so much more decisive".
| analog31 wrote:
| In my view, education has begun to act like wealth, because
| education is a form of wealth, and the productivity divide
| between wealth and work is increasing.
|
| Still, I'm skeptical of the whole idea, because it just seems
| too convenient for Republicans to drive a wedge between the
| Democratic party and the working class based on a perceived
| social division rather than real policy: We took away your
| unions and safety net, but by golly, we'll protect your
| "dignity."
| toasterlovin wrote:
| The Democratic Party is driving a wedge between itself, FWIW.
| The talking points around political correctness could not be
| better designed to alienate working and middle class white
| people.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Man, this is gold.
|
| I for long tried to write something along those lines, but I
| think the author did summarise my thoughts better than I
| could've done myself.
|
| The class conflict -- something that western literati class
| keep denying acknowledgement, is really the driver of much of
| social progress. And this holds more even more true in the West
| than in the East.
|
| The class warfare is there, it exists, and it is what has been
| responsible for the prime majority of political developments in
| the West for the last 30 years.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| 30 years eh. I think one might argue that "The history of all
| hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."
| yoz-y wrote:
| > We don't trust them, and would never vote for one of them. Why
| should they trust or vote for one of us?
|
| For the same reason I wouldn't trust a doctor without a degree
| proving they did due diligence for years. I know this feels
| different because "anybody can do politics" but without a large
| worldview the measures taken will be inevitably short sighted.
|
| Now, it works the other way too. As the article states, losing
| touch with the base leads to problems.
| ben_w wrote:
| I was thinking about this recently. I'm _not_ qualified in
| politics, and I'm aware that my knowledge is too limited to be
| properly aware of how limited it is, but the thought was:
|
| Democracy isn't so much the best form of government as the best
| steering wheel to keep the government aligned with the
| interests of the people. The best actual form of government is
| technocracy, but technocracy with no democratic accountability
| is just going to competently achieve things that the people may
| not care about or may actively dislike.
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