Another Hidden Hand

Suppose we ramble around the recently published table of BBC salaries. There are many things we could say about dividing the licence loot in this way, but even if we take a relaxed view, it seems out of place in an outfit supposedly committed to equality.

BBC salaries do not seem to reflect ability, talent or a market for TV presenters, but rather a consequence of something wider - the ascendency of a social class. They are perhaps a reminder of a comment by Melanie Phillips - our elites are ignorant, bigoted and irrational. Why? Perhaps because this too is a consequence of something wider. Perhaps it is necessary for them to be this way - a feature rather than a fault.

Moving on but not very far. How does a government assert and retain its ascendency over the general population apart from force? As truth is relentlessly democratic, ascendency has to be maintained in a way which does not validate itself via a dispassionate search for truth. In a search for truth there is nothing to validate elite ascendency.

Ascendency is no longer exhibited by top hats, haughty manners and superior accents - they belong to the past. Too visible for a modern age. Yet elite ascendency cannot be validated by superior knowledge either, because knowledge is not sufficiently exclusive and too easily checked. It’s the truth problem again. Elite ascendency cannot be accessible to all.

All of which leads us to a world which may not make sense wherever it supposedly validates elite ascendency. It never does that. Elite ascendency cannot be maintained by superior truth, superior knowledge or a superior level of accountability. The problem is a consequence of what elite ascendency is.

Elites exhibit much of their ascendency via irrational narratives and the mediation of those narratives by elites themselves and by their minions. Yet over time, irrational narratives cannot fulfil their claims and implications, so accountability is off the agenda. Again, lack of accountability is a consequence of what elite ascendency is.

We see a grotesque example of this in North Korea where elites propagate regime narratives to the exclusion of almost everything else in every aspect of daily life. Yet North Korean elites are almost never responsible for narrative failures. Brute force is used to push the responsibility down to minions.

What we end up with is the hidden hand of ascendency, a consequence of what ascendency is. It is maintained by ignorant and irrational narratives mediated by elites and their minions. It is further maintained by bigotry directed by rulers against the ruled, because the search for truth cannot be tolerated as a universal ideal. Another consequence.

Even those who are seen to value a genially dispassionate search for truth may be labelled as bad people. The bigotry is a feature too.