As I was growing up, a job was something you were paid to do because it involved making something work. That something could be anything from making a column of figures add up to making a power station work, from making a farm work to making a pullover work as an item of clothing. Everything from a bus route to a brick kiln to a bar to a breakwater. It was all essentially practical.
Things have changed. A number of factors appear to be responsible for the change and one of them may be the expansion of university education. Over recent decades this has inserted immature student politics into dominant positions within national politics and the media. It appears to be driven by two key factors –
- The rise in number of people with a university degree.
- Economic growth and the expansion of feckless middle class politics.
Strident demands that everything must be pulled up and begun anew, reliance on ideology over practical experience, identity politics, environmental radicalism, political intransigence and a consequent rise in political intolerance and outright malice. These are the consequences.
Articulate but essentially immature people have huge influence in the media, politics, celebrity culture and the wider promotion of cultural immaturity. This is the striking thing about the public arena – its lack of maturity. Immaturity is inherently intolerant and what we see developing now is widespread institutional intolerance.
We saw a tragic lack of genuine maturity during the coronavirus debacle. A time for leadership, ferociously difficult decisions and an almost wartime level of responsibility. It didn’t happen. There were no adults in the room.
10 comments:
Will we ever return to a sensible society? It's doubtful when all the politicians, media-scientists, 'health' workers, etc., are mentally degraded by Common Purpose nonsense and marxist agendas.
As 'they' have fucked up the economy over what turns out to be just a bad flu, we all know this will now be an annual event. Got to keep the serfs down.
Yes, I agree entirely. The converse way of looking at this is the rise of theory. Previously, people were only taught (or picked up) enough theoretical knowledge to make things work. They largely didn't question those theories because they worked. Now, large numbers of young people are introduced to theories which relate to practicalities which are way beyond anything they are likely to encounter. They learn theories of what drives history; how societies evolve; what changes the climate; what makes people do bad things or commit crimes; what different taxation systems do to economies; how countries get rich. None of these things can be affected by the vast majority of people who learn about them. And yet they vote on the basis of such theories, express opinions, run the media, and form pressure groups.
The same applies even to the "elite" that go to Eton and study PPE at Oxford and think they would like a crack at governing the rest of us. Previously, the system worked well because those people also had tough practical experience in the military, or in business, or in the professions.
“Articulate but essentially immature people have huge influence in the media, politics, celebrity culture and the wider promotion of cultural immaturity. This is the striking thing about the public arena – its lack of maturity. Immaturity is inherently intolerant and what we see developing now is widespread institutional intolerance. “
Couldn’t be put better.
Good post!
It was Tony Blair's idea to saturate the unis with a) money and b) kids to keep them off the unemployment lists.
It's the price we now have to pay for the crowd you mention above!
“Articulate but essentially immature people have huge influence in the media, politics, celebrity culture and the wider promotion of cultural immaturity. This is the striking thing about the public arena – its lack of maturity. Immaturity is inherently intolerant and what we see developing now is widespread institutional intolerance. “
My brother and I were talking about this the other day. This phenomena is underlined by the propensity to have comedians in every nook and cranny airing their political and social opinions so as to anoint the rest of us. For example the BBC consider almost any subject matter, science, history, you name it must be subject to this treatment. It's the 'flippancy'
disease and I'm fed up with it.
The problem is that capitalism has made us too wealthy. That is to say it has increased our productivity so much that increasingly few people are required to keep the wheels of society moving. Covid has shown us this, vast swathes of the workforce stopped working, and life continued just fine. There was food in the shops, power in the grid, gas and water in the pipes, the telecommunications networks functioned perfectly, petrol was freely available on the forecourt, the sewers functioned, the trains continued to run, ships docked and unloaded their cargoes, the practical necessities of life continued virtually as normal. All that stopped was all the unnecessary bits of 'work' that we have created in order to provide activity for the otherwise dispossessed.
And the irony is that the people who are doing the really necessary bits are the 'uneducated' (the lorry drivers, the brickies, the farmers, the workers in factories, etc etc) and the people doing the unnecessary bits are the 'educated'. This I feel is the tension in society today - the clash between the people who 'do' (the producer class), but are politically powerless, and the people who 'do' nothing but who control everything (the parasite class).
The questions every person should ask themselves are 'If I stop doing what I do will someone somewhere ultimately lose one of the necessities of life, and did I get where I am by dint of having a degree that has no bearing whatsoever on what I do'? If the answer is No to the first and/or Yes to the second then the chances are you're in the parasite class.
Ed - "Got to keep the serfs down." Unfortunately I think you are right. There is ample evidence that democracy is essentially over as a political experiment.
Sam - yes that's a good point. Recently I was mulling over the notion of "theory" as applied to ideas which don't come anywhere near meeting Popper's scientific criterion of falsifiability. Even the official climate change narrative isn't a theory in that sense, but it isn't at all easy to make the argument stick.
James - thanks (:
Scrobs - thanks. I think Blair's intention was to create more middle class Labour voters and also reduce the value of a degree, making social contacts relatively more important.
Tammly - I agree - Horrible Histories springs to mind too. Looking back, writers of comedy shows have regularly made fun of ordinary decent people. Yes we should be able to laugh at ourselves, but popular as it was, even Dad's Army made fun of decent people doing their best for the war effort.
Sobers - "And the irony is that the people who are doing the really necessary bits are the 'uneducated'"
Yes and for months that fact of daily life has been there for all to see. I think that's why we were encouraged to clap the NHS. Nothing to do with the NHS, but a distraction from the embarrassingly obvious nonsense about 'key workers' we have heard for many years.
To my mind this is the core problem with immigration. There isn't enough to do and for decades we have known why this problem was bound to get worse.
It occurs to me that we have arrived at a situation now that mirrors that which existed pre-WW1, a self perpetuating and increasingly aloof ruling class and an increasingly alienated working class. The main difference now is that the ruling class is significantly bigger than it was in 1914, being in effect a sub-set of the parasite class, and thus has more electoral power, especially when it buys the votes of the welfare class with taxes levied on the producer class, and introduces millions of new voters (via immigration) who also rely on its largesse, and indeed the right to be in the country at all. Thus it feels emboldened to behave in ways that the aristocracy would have not for fear of provoking the working classes too much.
It is why I'm so fearful for the future, because the aristocracy had a personal incentive to reduce their own power and cede to the masses - there was 1 Lord of the Manor, but many estate workers. And thus over time the aristocracy relinquished their power peacefully to the democrats, to preserve their own lives ultimately. This time the ruling/parasite class thinks it has the right to rule, indeed the moral imperative to rule, because the masses are so appalling in their views. And thus will never voluntarily cede power. I see that the only way the current dynamic can be changed is by violent revolution rather than by peaceful democratic means. We see what happens when the producer class accidentally stumbles upon a democratic champion or cause, the parasite class immediately do everything within their considerable power to thwart the democratic vote. See Trump and Brexit.
Sobers - well said. I think there were enough members of the aristocracy who saw the need to change, that the tide was running against the old ways and change was the only way to head off revolution.
You are right - the ruling/parasite class does think it has the moral imperative to rule and as yet there is no tide running against them. Maybe it is this which has to evolve via a series of failures such as green policy failures and failure to integrate immigrants. The mess could be horrendous though.
" as yet there is no tide running against them. "
I think there is, we just don't see it, because the media are part of the ruling class and run interference for them. Its why we saw Brexit happen because all that hidden political emotion was given an outlet. Ditto Trump. My feeling is there is a huge amount of pent up anger and frustration in the country, and it is just looking for an outlet. The trigger could be anything. The main problem the masses have is the ruling class are anonymous. They don't live in the big mansion or castle anymore, so on a local level who do you go looking for?
Basically the Ruling Class have become the Borg. A hive mind, with one objective, power and how to retain it, and regardless of whether you happen to depose one of them for some egregious action, another of the hive seamlessly takes over the reins of power and everything continues as before.
Even those at the lower levels of the hive will automatically work towards the common goal. I don't think that Trump was the victim of some great electoral conspiracy for example, I just think that at every turn some fairly low level State operative took the opportunity to stick the boot in, because thats their prime directive - defend the hive and eject invaders. They didn't have to be told to swap a few votes to Biden, or lose a memory card, or invent a few dozen extra Biden votes, or help people vote who shouldn't be, they all just knew that was their role. Add up millions of small individual actions and you get one large action, just as how a hive of bees make honey.
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