Friday 26 November 2021
Deeper forces are at work
This piece by David Starkey is well worth reading. It links woke politics with the historical rise of a complex interweaving of social class in an increasingly technical world.
...the web, which has imprisoned so much of humanity in an actual Plato’s Cave, has fatally eroded the distinction between truth and falsehood on which the intellectual revolution of the western mind was based in the half millennium since the Renaissance and Reformation.
The result is the Great Awokening, which echoes and combines the worst aspects of the Romantic Movement and the Religious Revival that were the nineteenth century’s reaction to the Age of Enlightenment.
But, I would argue, older, deeper forces are at work as well. Including one of the oldest and deepest: the idea of a “profession” as distinct from (and of course superior to) a mere trade.
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6 comments:
Starkey is always excellent.
The bit about professions knowing what is best for their clients is especially interesting. Often, as in social work and policing, the "clients" are pretty much victims or targets from the outset. There isn't even the possibility of withholding fees or future custom to slow them down. And the same applies to any monopoly, as per socialised medicine.
"Sordid arts"
Quite like that.
Speaking as one rude mechanical to another...
When I started working in the early 70s my employer was still part of the Civil Service (that swiftly changed, but not down to my efforts). The old hands around the tea table told me of how second line managers (i.e. managers of the basic managers) would have had at least one servant 'before the war'. They were regarded as professionals and dispassionate authority was their watchword.
How things have changed. The Civil Service managers 'professionalism' has slowly eroded from the base up as 'jobs' rather than 'profession' has become the dominant descriptor. It is still eroding as the top level jobs are becoming more politicised.
All of this erosion is nothing new as Starkey illustrates. 'Professionals' start out with some arcane knowledge not available to the ordinary man. Professionals work hard to maintain their elite status and erect barriers against 'just anybody' (the rude mechanicals) competing in their professional practice. But they can't help themselves. They offload the boring bits of their work to rude mechanicals. Conveyancing no longer requires a solicitor. Typing and secretaries have become 'womens' work'. Teachers try to assert their professionalism (and I know some very good, and bad, ones) but are confounded by the nature of their work as childminders, which anyone can do.
And the latest turn of the screw is the idea that 50% of the school leavers may have a university education. Was it a cunning plan by Blair to 'lift up' the previously oppressed, or did he wish to break the norms of society in the hope that a more politically orientated 'utopia' of rude mechanicals would magically arise?
Good lead, thanks !
Sam - yes, professions knowing what is best for their clients is interesting. Very much part of the coronavirus mess and politics in general. A key aspect of climate change and Net Zero too.
James - sums up the BBC.
DJ - it's an interesting trend - teachers as childminders has been my view for years although as you say there are some very good ones. I'm not sure what Blair's aim was in increasing the number of school leavers who go on to university, but I guess his aim will have been purely political.
Sackers - he has a YouTube channel too.
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