House of Eratosthenes

One of the concepts I’ve been trying to get across to my readership over the last few posts is that of the “cognitive miser” or mass man. I really can’t emphasise enough just how important this concept is…the trajectory of the 20th Century makes a lot of sense when you look at it from the perspective of the cognitive miser. Simply by weight of numbers, it is he who determined the course of 20th Century history and has been its motor. Nazism, Socialism and Liberalism were harmless ideologies as long as they were confined to the parlor discussions of the philosophers. Cultured people saw the ideas for what they were and rejected them, their fertile ground, however, was amongst the cognitive misers, i.e the people.
:
…in the age of Beethoven the average German had no say in public affairs, but in the age of “democracy” stewardship of the nation was passed to the cognitive misers of Germany. Hitler would have been impossible in the Kaiser’s Germany, but he is possible in a modern Democracy.
:
Historians tend to think that the average man is swayed by ideas when in reality he is swayed by emotion. Fascism and Socialism appealed less to the mind than to the blood…democracy elevates the unthinking man into a position of power. It is therefore no surprise that when the wise and considered are pushed aside, governance ceases to be a considered subject but becomes an exercise in mob power in pursuit of the satiation of its hindbrain appetites.
:
In a democracy, the intellectual “center of gravity” drifts from a society’s best and brightest and, instead, finds its home amongst in the mind of the cognitive miser, who forms the bulk of humanity. The net effect is that there is an inevitable “prole drift’, not only of political debate, but of culture and morals, everything eventually gets vetted by the people (within their cognitive limitations) But there is another factor that needs to be considered here, namely economic democracy, i.e the free market. In a free democracy, cognitive misers do not just exert their malign effect through political power, but through economic power as well. Elitist activities–activities which represent the high point of civilisation– such as opera, classical music and and art, esoteric academic disciplines, and libraries struggle to survive economically in a market where the proles do not appreciate their intrinsic worth. Th[is] is not an argument against the free market, but an argument against the notion that everything has to pay for itself, it’s this latter notion that ensures that prole economies of scale overwhelm everything which eludes their comprehension.

Hmmm…great observations, although they’re in need of minor updates in some places.

First thing that would receive some updates from my little red pen: I am, no doubt, among the people who are bothered by what is happening here, would act against the damage wrought by these “mass men” were I in any position to do so, and yet I am very far removed from what might be called “a society’s best and brightest,” nor am I often a patron or supporter of said best-n-brightest. More people making more trips to the library, wouldn’t do much to mollify my concerns. Also, we have had some strain of “democracy” in parts of our government, restrained by other forces no doubt but still acting with some effect, since the founding of our nation. We’ve certainly had it since our senators were subject to popular vote, about a century ago. Many a “conservative revolution” has taken place since then, and the argument could be made that these were not all about putting Republicans in power or putting democrats out of power; they were about restoring sanity, bringing to a temporary end this reckless fantasy that great and grand things could be built by way of destroying other great and grand things. Conservatives, or libertarians, or anti-liberals, anti-“mass men,” are often mediocre people. What separates us from the cognitive misers is that we know what we don’t know, and we can — and do — distinguish between a creative process and a destructive one.

Conservatives seek to create and preserve things that create or preserve, and destroy things that destroy
Liberals seek to create or preserve things that destroy, and destroy things that create or preserve

Second thing that draws my attention for red-ink highlighting is this business about “the notion that everything has to pay for itself”; my critique here is a bit more complex, and it intertwines somewhat with the other. I disagree with the statement. Quite to the contrary: The poisonous ideologies that deluge us in recent times, concede quite readily that everything does not have to pay for itself. Not only do they insist upon this point, but they leverage it on the way to asserting other things, some of them reasonable and others absurd. It is not an accurate illustration of the true split. The true split, in fact, overlaps with the other thing, this distinction between creative processes and destructive ones. Or, non-creative ones.

When a guy who pulls radishes out of the ground, or runs the machine that makes toilet paper, or does something else that would get him an interview on Dirty Jobs…toils away all year long, failing to make even a fraction of what the Kardashian sisters make in one episode by producing moving electronic images of themselves arguing about a bunch o’ nothing — that situation is, I think, a stepping stone on the way to the toxic effect explored here. But lust for Nielsen ratings money is not the problem. The guy who crawls into the big sewer pipe to remove the last bits of used-food out of it, wants money too. Were he offered twice as much as he’s already getting, of course he’d take it, and who could blame him? We see here the origins of a problem that will eventually gum up the entire machinery that is the society in which we live: It pays a lot more to entertain, producing nothing but nonsense, than it does to produce goods and provide services that people actually need. The people living within the society, therefore, are encouraged to produce nonsense, rather than goods that other people need.

Such a society becomes a victim of its own success. People living within, can rely upon getting what they want and what they need. Because of this, they are drawn toward placing greater value upon the wants, taking the needs for granted. The mass-of-mass-men, therefore, goes rushing off headlong toward the Kardashians, toward Paris Hilton, toward…I dunno, that list probably needs updating in ways that require current information I don’t have. They go rushing off toward empty idols. These “cognitive misers” want to watch the empty-idols, and they want to become the empty-idols. Certainly, they manage to get the job done of compensating the empty-idols for being empty. Such material rewards do not find their way to the guy who cleans the filth out of their sewer pipes, nor to the guy who presses their toilet paper for them (so they can clog up the pipe again).

Ultimately, the mass moves where it moves, which means destructive — and non-productive — endeavors are richly and materially rewarded, whereas the productive ones are not. And here, I would meld my second-red-ink-target correction into that wonderful phrasing about “the satiation of…hindbrain appetites.” The productive things are not being provided, because the rewards for providing them are whittled down. Everybody sees a Kardashian, so everybody wants to be a Kardashian.

The way it’s supposed to work, of course, is that people are rewarded for doing productive things, and this provides an incentive for production. So the “everything has to pay for itself” dictum is not where the problem starts, the problem is a bit further down the line as the dictum is turned around & perverted. You can’t go to the football game until you get new tires on your car; it costs $200 to get the tires, and twice that for the seats at the football game. People freely give up the money for the seats at the game, and somehow feel resentful over giving up less money for something that can be used afterward on many other things. The “mass man” starts to see entertainment as a necessity; he sees true necessities, when they cost real money from time to time, as some kind of theft or other skulduggery. Why do new tires cost that much money? It should be more like $140 or something. And didn’t we put the last set on just eight years ago?

So the problem isn’t that everyone can vote and have a say. The problem is that when they can, they are asked about what’s important and what isn’t; being overfed, fat, spoiled and lazy, they don’t understand how to provide the necessary answers. So they vote on what’s fun. And not just in November of even-numbered years, the rest of the time they vote with their feet. About what’s fun.

Cognitive misers…seeing to the satiation of society’s hindbrain appetites. That’s good wording there. Artistic, and accurate.

Everybody sees a Kardashian, so everybody wants to be a Kardashian.

I think this is the point behind opera and classical music and all that other highfalutin’ stuff.

I have no problem with people making their living as entertainers. Time was, though, entertainers entertained with talent. I would have zero problem with kids seeing a Mozart and wanting to be a Mozart. Or even seeing Sinatra and wanting to be Sinatra (minus the whole mob thing). It’s what I was getting at when talking about Kobe Bryant: These are people who worked insanely hard to develop their natural talents. Kardashians are famous because they won the genetic lottery* and are shameless — the only hard work they do is suppressing the still small voices of decorum and sanity.

I think what the author is getting at — certainly what I’m getting at — is that since there is always going to be an elite, I would much prefer an elite that knows it is elite, and knows why it is elite, and behaves accordingly. This can be perverted, of course — noblesse oblige becomes droit de signeur — but for the most part, an aristocracy that knows it is an aristocracy keeps the worst excesses of the mass in check. Our modern aristocracy becomes aristocratic by means of those excesses.
- Severian | 09/15/2013 @ 07:43
“Cognitive misers…seeing to the satiation of society’s hindbrain appetites”

, Harumph! Why that’s just a bunch of Idiocracy !
- CaptDMO | 09/15/2013 @ 09:35

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“Poisonous Ideologies” in the Age of the “Mass Man”Saturday, September 14th, 2013

“Poisonous Ideologies” in the Age of the “Mass Man”
Saturday, September 14th, 2013