Balanced pair
Two articles showed up in my usual website wanderings today. The two form a nice balance or bridge. Both are written by careful thinkers, not blind partisans. Both are on the same basic topic.

Meritocracy.

One defends the standard Shared Lie, the other is proposing realism.

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From the allegedly independent leftists at Persuasion, a stout defense of Meritocracy:

Meritocracy was a real creation that took time, and that took a certain self-denying ordinance—we were pushing against some of the most obvious things about human nature. So, meritocracy has a relatively brief history, in the sense that it’s the creation of the French Revolution, the American Revolution, and of what I call the the “English Revolution,” the Gladstonian revolution of the 19th century—all of which were taking the old social order and tearing it up, saying, “Let’s reconstitute the social order on the basis of a set of new principles, open competition, testing people’s promise and ability, getting rid of nepotism, getting rid of feudal restrictions.”

Pushing against human nature and reconstituting the social order: true. Psychopaths always reconstruct humans to suit their purposes.

Testing people's promise and ability: False.

We still have a completely inherited hierarchy WITHIN THE RULING CLASS, and we have eliminated the hierarchy of SKILL in the working class. Before Locke and Marat, farmers and blacksmiths and printers trained their sons to take over the business. This also happened within the employed class in feudal systems, where family continuity was important. Serfs could be bought and sold, but mostly they continued to work on the same farm, training their children. The employer had a lifelong OBLIGATION to the workers, and he gained more by maintaining an INTERGENERATIONAL loyalty. Grandparents were supported because they were helping to bring up the kids into effective workers.

Persuasion tries to answer this:

Absolutely. I think if you’re going to take people seriously as human beings, you have to take their talents seriously. You have to take into account the fact that there are people who have potential, who can develop that potential, and who are at their most fulfilled when they are expressing that. I think a good society is a society [with] the development of talent at [its] very heart. You have to be willing to test your talent. There’s a lot of criticism by the anti-meritocratic people about the terrible examination system, [with] everybody spending a life doing examinations. Most of us don’t like doing examinations. But doing examinations is also a way of developing our talents.

Spending a life doing exams? Exams seem to be dominant in Britain and the Orient, but not in America. So maybe I'm missing the point. In any case, feudal systems had room for the RARE genetic variations that led to out-of-family talents. We shouldn't lose the transfer of the MAJORITY of skills solely to encourage this RARE situation, which was already encouraged.

I can think of two obvious examples. Carver's owners recognized his unique skill and helped him develop it to benefit their farm. Astronomer James Ferguson was born poor and spent his early life in involuntary apprenticeships. Some of the masters recognized his unique talent and gave him time and room to develop it.

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James Hankins writing in Public Discourse is more realistic and more original. He grasps the current situation accurately:

Suppose you were living at a time when all around you, it seemed, civilization was breaking down. Political institutions were so little respected that the only way they could compel obedience was by increasing surveillance, multiplying laws, and tightening enforcement. People did not trust their leaders and suspected that elites were only interested in themselves. Many leaders were tyrannous, ignoring constitutional norms. Religious leaders engaged in scandalous behavior, and religious faith was losing its hold over the educated classes. Standards of personal behavior had collapsed, and it seemed that most people had forgotten what even ordinary decency was. Examples of upright character were hard to find, heroism almost unknown. The young went to universities only to learn how to earn money and achieve status. Even the military had grown corrupt. A great pandemic had taken many lives and filled people with fear. No one believed any more that medical science was honest about its ability to cope with the disease.

Welcome to the fourteenth century.

On the fucking dot.

Hankins tells how Petrarch created a system to clean up the ELITES:

The scholastic approach to ethics is precisely the opposite of what Petrarch wanted to do with the studia humanitatis. He and his followers invented a new form of education whose principal purpose was to develop good moral character and practical wisdom. In their view, the souls of all human beings contained both good and bad, but a well-designed curriculum could help cultivate the good and make students ashamed to do the bad. It could impart “true nobility” to human nature—not the kind of nobility inherited from forebears or acquired from titles handed out by dishonorable authorities, but the kind of nobility that came from true, personal distinction, a distinction gained through study, effort, and admiration earned honestly from one’s peers. Petrarch’s view and that of his followers was that persons with true nobility could and should provide the leadership to reform Christendom. So you could say that Petrarch and his followers invented a new kind of meritocracy.

In other words, Petrarch created exams that flunked psychopaths. Priests and courtiers had to show an ability to think and work FOR THE GOOD OF SOCIETY.

The concept of institutio (paideia in Greek; inadequately translated as “education”) for the humanists meant not only learning to read old books in school. It meant absorbing the moral and intellectual formation human beings needed to live successfully in civilized societies. It included manners (mores) learned informally in the family and the school. It included the customs of the community, practices like those associated with marriage, with taking meals together, with showing reverence for elders, with other rituals associated with festivals and funerals, and with military service.

Hankins proposes a concrete modern version of the Petrarch project, in considerable detail:

First, we have to recognize that this is a long-term project. It may well take more than one or two generations to revive sound education. It may have to start in private homes and small colleges, but we cannot give up on the public square and the universities.

We need to find ways to acquire cultural prestige. We need to build alliances, form networks, and find patrons who share our vision.

I think also we need to emphasize more strongly the role of the humanities in strengthening skills of communication and persuasion. The precise use of language is an indispensable tool of civilization. We need to hold up an ideal of human excellence and challenge students to attain it.

Amen to the precise use of language. Room 101 is all about ruining the TOOL of language.

In other words, Hankins proposes using exams to limit the ruling class, while Persuasion favors using exams to limit the working class.

Labels: 2000=1000, Equipoise, skill-estate

  ¶ 11:09 PM