House of Eratosthenes

Fair disclosure: I don’t have any higher-level education. At all (save for a corporate accounting course at a community college once). But twenty years have come and gone since the last time I had a job that didn’t “demand” a college degree. Skill, luck, a combination of those two…whatever. The point is, I’m not a neutral observer in what follows. But I’m not an ignorant or inexperienced one either.

Awhile ago, The Anchoress invited bloggers to define exactly what’s wrong with the world. My response was, among other things, that people as they exist in the here-and-now place too much emphasis on being something, and not enough emphasis on doing something.

Liberalism, if the substance resembles the packaging, ought to be a perfect antidote to this. An end to discrimination would mean that what people are doesn’t matter one bit. We would then turn our energies and interests toward what we, and everybody else, would do.

And yet, take a look at David Brooks’ slobbering Obama-…I’m really struggling to find a noun to place after that hyphen. I need something family friendly. Let’s just say his enthusiasm surpasses what one commonly finds in a G-rated enclave. He’s doing with the iPresident-Elect what Monica did with Bill. (Hat tip to Malkin.)

Jan. 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law) and Susan Rice (Stanford, Oxford D. Phil.).

The domestic policy team will be there, too, including Jason Furman (Harvard, Harvard Ph.D.), Austan Goolsbee (Yale, M.I.T. Ph.D.), Blair Levin (Yale, Yale Law), Peter Orszag (Princeton, London School of Economics Ph.D.) and, of course, the White House Counsel Greg Craig (Harvard, Yale Law).

This truly will be an administration that looks like America, or at least that slice of America that got double 800s on their SATs. Even more than past administrations, this will be a valedictocracy — rule by those who graduate first in their high school classes. If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we’re screwed.

Ha ha! How droll.

First problem…does it not defeat all the talking points about January 20 being “an historic occasion” if these people really are the best-suited to “rule,” and it is their natural place to do so? If that’s the case then why was there any wait at all in getting this brain trust ensconced?

Second problem…it’s a case of being over doing. I’ve learned this is nearly always the case when the degrees are given too much importance — discussion about what these people do, comes to an abrupt halt. (In the case of Eric Holder, it is grudgingly acknowledged and then hastily shoved aside.)

The third and fourth problems arise from the second. Degrees are accolades affixed by strangers, usually strangers whose acquaintances will never be made, whose identities will never be known. It is a proxy evaluation of the applicant’s competence, which may be of about as much value as no evaluation at all. And the fourth problem is — as degrees are used as a stencil outline for determining who’s a good “fit” and who is not, the thinking observer cannot help but gather the impression that those deemed worthy, are not nearly as crucial to the exercise as those who are excluded.

I know I should be reacting with hurt feelings, a temper tantrum, some kind of rage when liberals drone on about the importance of degrees. It’s a dual attack upon my biography; I’m not liberal and I don’t have a degree. But my natural reaction is more one of genuine curiosity. Does anyone else see the glaring contradiction? The object of the exercise is to eliminate discrimination. How far we are to go with that, depends on which liberal you ask; there’s no shortage of the complete-utopian types who will soldier on tirelessly until everyone is on precisely equal footing, in all walks of life. Perfect flatness; no compromises. They want the Star Trek universe, except without Captains, Admirals and Ensigns. Everyone on an equal level.

Then their representatives get elected.

And not only are those officials discriminating with the elevation of being-over-doing; they have to. If we were to abolish these prestigious diplomas and degrees overnight, by seven o’clock the next morning they’d latch on to some other thing. They need a “club,” and there is no such thing as a non-exclusive club. Someone has to be left out.

I keep hearing these high SAT scores are indicative of drive, of the ability to “succeed” at all kinds and types of things. I’ve spent my twenty years in what should have been fifty-yard-line front-row-seats, positions that should have qualified me to see it in action, first hand. There is a glimmer of truth to it. I’ve met people with tons and tons of drive, who did of course have their Masters’ and such. I’ve also met people with more drive, who had no more education than yours truly.

And when you line people up according to who-built-what, who laid the bedrock upon which we’re laboring to put down that hot asphalt, who laid the floorboards before we started arranging the furniture…who’s on the heavy end of that spectrum? Who laid the groundwork for what is really used, what actually changed the tomorrow of yesterday? Who made a functional impact? It wasn’t the ivy-league crowd. It could not have been, you see, because they were too busy pleasing others. There’s the rub — that’s what these letters after the names, really are all about.

And on this fourth problem, this particular point, we come to something that is hard to communicate to people because it involves an ugly truth about all of humanity. We are not so much enamored of people who will “get the job done,” as we are of people who will attempt to get it done exactly the way we ourselves would so attempt if we were they. Fact is — when the time comes to make a choice, would you rather have it done your way, or would you rather have it done? — most of us would rather see the attempt fail. Just so long as things are done everywhere the way we would do them.

People do not value getting things done, over getting things done their way.

In fact if you set about a task differently from the way they’d do it, and succeed, they get pissed.

And college professors are people.

The student who says to himself “It won’t work that way, I’ll have to devise my own method if success is to be realized” — won’t graduate.

This leads to a paucity, within our higher ranks, of those who are gifted in thinking about cause-and-effect. If we do this, then these positive-or-negative consequences will be in store for us. The people-pleasers tend to crowd them out, in those extra-large cubicles and corner offices.

Yes, everybody has the foresight — even Harvard people! — to keep the tableware out of the electrical outlet, lest one receive a nasty shock. It’s not a question of having the reflexes to match Mark Twain’s cat who’d stay off the hot stove. The question is how much foresight. How early in the effort can these consequences be anticipated. This exercise in people-pleasing tends to wash that out, much the way your view of a much-anticipated meteor shower is obstructed if you fail to get away from the lights of the city. It becomes a “serving two masters” thing.

But the primary point I wish to make here, is that we do have the basis of a comparison.

Because we’re different. Thank goodness.

And those who have just been elected to rule over this nation, or govern it, whatever terminology you choose — want to eliminate those differences. They say. Everything they want to do is “for all” or “for everybody.” Everything’s possible for everyone. That’s just swell.

But a complete victory here would ruin them. Their public-relations methods have everything to do with showing us how wonderful they are, what a pristine, elevated, superhuman Mount Olympus they have up there above the clouds.

The membership is defined by elitism. Without a terracing of the human landscape, Mount Olympus could not exist, because nobody would be left out of it.

This is permanent and timeless. It matters not one bit if you have a cabinet or transition team you need to form. You have to leave people out before you can leave people in. “We Are Good People” is something that, to act upon an audience in a compelling way, can only be expressed as a comparative statement.

Man, you just don’t quit. ABSOLUTELY right on.

It’s of course only fair to note that, like you, I have no degree, although I’ve paid my way through a couple of trade schools. To me, your point speaks to the proud blue-collar tradition in our country, among other things, and points up the stark difference between the current elevation of “Process” over “Results”. The continuing feminisation of our culture has led to a situation where people are encouraged to feel they’ve addressed a problem if they’ve talked it to death and reached consensus.

15 years ago I was attempting to teach TQM principles in a corporation. One of my mantras was “People come to work every day with one of two strategies: Do My Job, Or Keep My Job.”

I didn’t last long.
- rob | 11/24/2008 @ 16:27
Federalism was supposed to give ideas the opportunity to succeed or fail on their own merits, but that’s not enough for power-hungry dictators. These control freaks are not happy unless people are forced to live under their authority. That’s why they can’t confine their ideas to one state. And that’s also why they won’t be able to confine their ideas to one nation, either.
- JohnJ | 11/24/2008 @ 20:56
Frankly the incoming Obama cabinet sounds a lot like the old Soviet politburo – a lot of high-minded talk about freedom and equality and opportunity for everyone (instead of just those greedy corporate capitalist swine and their cronies)….but in reality just the opposite. A small pedigreed elite making all of the decisions while everyone else labors to pay for the State’s grand schemes. Surprisingly, utopia always seems to be just over the next hill, but never in the here and now.

I agree with Morgan. And worse, I say this as someone who does have a bachelor’s degree – some actual post-secondary education and therefore “letters” after his name. My cousin is within reach of his PhD, and he would agree as well.

If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think there is any shortage of employers who seem more concerned about what you have actually done with your time since finishing school, and who are less concerned with what merits you earned. After all, I think most of us can agree that the real purpose of a college education is often not what you actually learned, but merely that you proved you have what it takes to stick with something tough – what Morgan would call “drive.” That statement, of course, disintegrates when you consider those who actually enter the field that they studied while in school.
- cylarz | 11/25/2008 @ 01:53
Amen, Morgan. Here’s a PhD hoping you’ll manage to cobble together an analysis of how much success (income, accomplishments, etc.) correlates w/ academic degrees. Institutions of higher learning wouldn’t want you to publish the results!
- cfreeberg | 11/28/2008 @ 12:13
[…] pointed this out last year, after the elections were over. Their platform suffers from devastating and irreconcilable internal contradictions, before it is […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 12/29/2009 @ 06:44
[…] perhaps they understand, on some subconscious level, that a complete victory here would ruin them. If one idea is universally recognized as being so stupid that nobody will deign to support it; and […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 03/28/2010 @ 12:12
[…] Me, again: [A] complete victory here would ruin them. Their public-relations methods have everything to do with showing us how wonderful they are, what a pristine, elevated, superhuman Mount Olympus they have up there above the clouds. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 04/10/2010 @ 06:24
[…] going to bring us all together and end our petty bickering, but they never do get there because you can’t have anyone in the club if you don’t leave someone out of the club. Truth is, they don’t want to be in charge. “Winning” an election, or an […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 04/30/2010 @ 05:17
[…] either convert or die. But not all of us are to convert, and maybe all of us are not to die either. A complete victory here would ruin them, I said, because if everybody everywhere is in complete agreement that the liberal ideas are the […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 05/22/2010 @ 06:55
[…] and I’m just trying to show I’m better than that other guy? This is why I said a complete victory here would ruin them. They want to hold us “all” up to a higher standard of humanity, decency, civility; but […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 06/07/2010 @ 18:14
[…] you listen to the speech a little while longer, it becomes quickly apparent that these politicians would not be able to handle a new social order that works this way, in which everybody can do everything with equal ease. The minute they identify a problem, they […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 02/05/2011 @ 11:45
[…] is exactly what I was noticing shortly after Obama was elected President: Liberals get a lot of ego gratification out of being […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/30/2012 @ 07:43
[…] is exactly what I was noticing shortly after Obama was elected President: Liberals get a lot of ego gratification out of being […]
- The Vampire Problem | Right Wing News | 07/30/2012 @ 08:00
[…] is exactly what I was noticing shortly after Obama was elected President: Liberals get a lot of ego gratification out of being […]
- The Vampire Problem | Washington Rebel | 07/30/2012 @ 08:00
[…] way for it to happen. So as much as they prattle on about “equality,” the truth is that a complete victory here would ruin them, as inequality is the gasoline for their engines. They bludgeon others into this […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/21/2013 @ 13:19
[…] way for it to happen. So as much as they prattle on about “equality,” the truth is that a complete victory here would ruin them, as inequality is the gasoline for their engines. They bludgeon others into this […]
- Memo For File CLXXXII | Rotten Chestnuts | 07/23/2013 @ 12:28

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

Complete Victory Would Ruin ThemMonday, November 24th, 2008

Complete Victory Would Ruin Them
Monday, November 24th, 2008