House of Eratosthenes

Wisdom from my Hello Kitty of Blogging account. It was a comment I made in a thread, underneath a status update — not the status update itself. So by its very nature and the necessity of bringing it into being in the first place, it arguably belongs there…but, as is so often the case, once I post it and look at it, I see it is more at home here.

What I was doing was expounding on something wise that Prof. Thomas Sowell said:

Much of the self-righteous nonsense that abounds on so many subjects cannot stand up to three questions: (1) Compared to what? (2) At what cost? and (3) What are the hard facts?

The Prof. is way too classy to mention the word “liberal.” I am not similarly encumbered.

I have found that if there is one question, or question-fragment, that is universally unanswerable in liberal-land, it would be a bunch of questions sharing a common theme of “Is that the model.” Is that a picture of the way we want to see ’em go. Is that the way we want to have it turn out.

They’ve made a sort of sport out of defending the indefensible. And then on top of defending it, they build it up to such lofty heights…they lunge, exuberantly and irrationally, toward the superlative when there is no reason to do so. They can’t simply argue that Obama is a good President, He has to be the BEST ONE SINCE WASHINGTON and maybe better than Washington too. And they do that with everything. The ACA is not just a keeper. It is WONDERFUL legislation. Everyone who loathes it, or merely hesitates to extend approval to it, is a dumb knuckle-dragger.

So you ask them: Alright then…is that the model? Should we want a lot more legislation to look like this? Be ratified the way this was? Be adjudicated the way this was? Be implemented the way this was? Is that the desirable prototype? The ideal toward which future legislation should aspire?

Deer in the headlights. They have no idea what to do with that.

Joe Biden is the pinnacle of all desirable personal attributes and strengths in a Vice President? If so, what specifically would those desirable attributes be? What is it he is doing, that we should want all succeeding veeps to do?

You almost feel a tinge of proxy-embarrassment for them. When you ask things like “So, John Freakin’ Kerry, is he like the best Secretary of State ever? In what way? What does he offer, exactly, that we want our Secretaries of State to have? Is he better than Thomas Jefferson that way? Charles Evans Hughes?”

Skipping over details, is critically important to the exercise of confusing mediocrity with excellence. Details are unfriendly to this endeavor. But out here, in the real world, we have to care about details. We don’t have the luxury of ignoring them.

And that ventures into something else worthy of consideration. Our country is rapidly becoming balkanized, divided between what might be thought-of as “in the beltway” and “out of the beltway.” Although that is not completely accurate, since we have a lot of beltway types outside the beltway. That does not create a distinction we can actually use, because it doesn’t work in all cases.

Here’s what does work: The classic definitions of “blue collar” and “white collar.” Obviously, that division has not remained static for fifty years, even though it’s been about that long since it’s received any critical inspection. So we need to take stock of where exactly that division is. Blue is supposed to mean, you make your living with your hands. It may or may not involve physical strength. It usually means you don’t need to go to college, although that’s been going through radical change, and it never meant that you didn’t need to know something. Bricklaying, for example, has had masters and journeymen and apprentices for hundreds and hundreds of years, because a wall built by a bricklayer who didn’t know what he was doing, has always been worse than useless.

So. It’s not knowledge-versus-not-knowledge. It never was. It’s not college-versus-not-college…although, more than twenty years ago, it might have been that.

In spite of the shifts, the changing definitions are actually becoming simpler. And not in a good way.

We are still blue collar and white collar. But blue collar is: Mike Rowe might have wanted to interview you on Dirty Jobs. And, it’s: Whether people appreciate what you do or not, they really do need to have it done. That’s a bit problematic. We need to be careful of who we’re asking. Lots of people think their jobs are vital, but that’s not always true, so that is not the correct test to apply. We would have to imagine an alternate universe, created in the moment, with the altered condition that that occupation had gone away, and apply the thought exercise of: What happens, then? In that world, psychiatrists are expendable. So are lawyers. Hey, we were getting along quite alright when we had fewer of them, sorry lawyers but it’s true. But everybody poops, and that means everyone needs those pipes cleaned out.

This creates problems. Airline pilots typically wear white shirts, right? But what’s really white-collar about that job? They don’t make the rules; they follow them. They shepherd the machinery. They inject the human intuition into an operation where the machines can’t be entrusted to do everything, although the machines are already doing most of it — just like a bulldozer driver. Or a truck driver. As such, they sell their time, and not the same way I sell my time when I design and test software and then fill out a time sheet. So they’re blue-collar, and the question is more easily resolved in their case than in the case of a software engineer. Categorizing software engineers is a real problem. We certainly should be white-collar. We’re responsible for outcome, we make decisions that impact others, we even decide how things should work. But we’re not really supposed to; that’s just how it turns out. In reality, we’re not much more white collar than the airplane pilot. Other people make the rules and then we execute them, selling our time as we attend to the task of marrying up theory with reality. We’re on the ground, where the action happens. That makes us blue collar.

Sowell had something to say about this, too. As Wikipedia summarizes it, and it seems a fair summary, to me:

An intellectual’s work begins and ends with ideas, not practical applications. These purveyors of ideas may be at all points of the political and ideological spectrum, although Sowell generally reserves his sharpest criticisms for those on the left. Certain common patterns cut across specific political ideologies, however. Intellectuals, for example, show a marked preference for third parties, working outside the established power structures and applying what is presumed to be superior insight, to control the resources and decision making processes of the masses and their official leaders. This preference sometimes makes outwardly competing ideologies appear more alike than different. For example both National Socialism and Stalinism attempted to micro-manage the lives of their citizens; both implemented sweeping propaganda campaigns to reframe reality, and both resulted in leadership by an elite outside group. This, apparently, despite the fact that both movements were notoriously anti-intellectual.

Mmmmmmmm, hmmmmmm. Now we’re getting to the heart of it. We have theory, and we have practice, if those two were identical in every way and in every case then there would be nothing worth observing there. But they’re different, and at some point they have to meet up. We have people working close to the point of impact, and other people working apart and away from it, the “intellectuals,” whose “work begins and ends with ideas.”

With the consequence that, they do not have to deal with the nagging question of what happens when their ideas collide with reality. See, there is the distinction. That is what causes people to think in entirely different ways. Some of us have to contend with reality. It doesn’t necessarily make you think more brilliantly or keenly, but it absolutely does make you think differently. About little things. Little, tiny things like: My gunfire keeps drifting up, I need to adjust these sites in that direction. Cause and consequence. Stimulus and response. Reality.

“White collar,” to the extent it actually applies in this day & age — and I’m afraid it does — has to do with Sowell’s “intellectuals,” as he uses that word pejoratively. Intellectual giants, but mental midgets. Their work begins with ideas, and it ends there as well, so they never have to deal with implementation. They are several layers removed from the collision between theory and practice. They study a great deal more. And know a whole lot less.

Problem is: They run freakin’ everything. The people on the ground who can see how things are going, what actions cause what effect, can’t use that good information because they don’t have the authority. The rules, that were written up and socialized and validated and codified and adjudicated and ultimately signed, say you’re supposed to do such-and-such…and that’s the end of the conversation. Wait, which industry am I talking about here? I’ve lost track. It is no more possible to answer that question, than it is necessary. The situation I’ve described applies to industry after industry after industry, vocation after vocation after vocation, discipline after discipline after discipline. These mega-cool super-people who are so “wise” that they don’t have to actually deal with cause-and-effect, make the rules. Someone else, who has seen the wreckage that results, has the job of unquestioningly implementing these wise, wise, protocols and procedures. White collar and blue collar. That is how it’s divided up now.

When & if it all turns to crap…++cough++ healthcare.gov ++cough++…everyone can defend everything, because everyone followed the rules, and the rules were the correct ones, who are you to question any of it. Meanwhile, the results are crap. And that’s where the question comes in.

So…is this the model? This is how we wanna see ’em go, then?

It’s a good question. If it’s unanswerable, that may be inconvenient to a lot of people; nevertheless, that means something.

Update: Another Sowell classic:

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.

On one of my performance reviews at the place where it didn’t work out — that is spelled out in detail. Can’t remember the exact wording. “Morgan has a lot of experience at places that are concerned with final outcome, and occasionally irritates our engineers who are more concerned with process” or something similar to that. Software engineering, I guess, is an industry not quite as well-defined as a lot of people like to think it is. It has one foot in each of these two very different worlds.

I don’t. I’m far too simple and far too inflexible. It’s always been abundantly obvious where I do, and don’t, belong.

Sowell’s subtitle says it all: “Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.” If we are all “progressives,” then by definition we’re better than everyone else was yesterday, and we’ll be better tomorrow than we are today. Thus the process is the outcome — we have to keep re-inventing the wheel, because yesterday’s wheel was burdened with all the patriarchal heteronormative blah blah blah. As is today’s. But tomorrow’s….!!! As you say, they’re always one revolution away from happiness.

Obsessing over process also keeps us from realizing the inherent psychological contradiction of progressivism. Lefties take as a given that people are all products of “the system;” to change people / achieve social justice, we must change “the system.” Yet, being people, we too are products of “the system,” which makes all our efforts to change “the system” into just another part of “the system.” In other words: Actually achieving what we say we want — or even making measurable progress towards that end — renders the achievement meaningless.

An example: I knew a guy in college, way back when, who described himself as a “queer militant.” He never mentioned gay marriage. Not as a goal, or even a possibility — it literally never occurred to him. These days, of course, even standard-issue apolitical Goodpersons think gay marriage is a fundamental civil right. If that had been me — if I’d spent so much time and energy inhabiting the radical bleeding edge of a cause, yet something fundamental like that had never even crossed my mind — I’d have to do some serious soul-searching. But lefties never do. Endless focus on process makes it easier to get your head right, since we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
- Severian | 12/30/2013 @ 10:12
What’s the difference between a “queer militant”, and ie. a militant queer, supposed to be?
How do their “uniforms” differ?
- CaptDMO | 12/31/2013 @ 13:52
No clue. I didn’t get that far into it! But the larger point remains: This guy considered himself the gayest of the gay, fighting the greatest civil rights struggle of all time, and he never even considered gay marriage. If I somehow missed a fundamental right in the cause that defined my identity, I’d have to go meditate in a Tibetan cave for a few years or something. The left, ummm, doesn’t.
- Severian | 01/01/2014 @ 12:09
[…] medicine, hold up the “huge and vastly important universal healthcare system” as a model, then get embarrassed at the eventual results. Then talk up a storm about how angry they are, how […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 05/23/2014 @ 06:58

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

Is That the Model?Sunday, December 29th, 2013

Is That the Model?
Sunday, December 29th, 2013