I opened this up yesterday realizing that I'd written nothing here in the better part of a month, but was at a complete loss for topics. This has happened before of course, but is happening more often the last year or so as I realize i don't have much to say which is new. Well, who does anyway; it's a post-scarcity world for ideas too. With that in mind, here's what I think about what David Brooks thinks about our modern elites.
Everybody thinks they are countercultural rebels, insurgents against the true establishment, which is always somewhere else. This attitude prevails in the Ivy League, in the corporate boardrooms and even at television studios where hosts from Harvard, Stanford and Brown rail against the establishment.
As a result, today’s elite lacks the self-conscious leadership ethos that the racist, sexist and anti-Semitic old boys’ network did possess. If you went to Groton a century ago, you knew you were privileged. You were taught how morally precarious privilege was and how much responsibility it entailed. You were housed in a spartan 6-foot-by-9-foot cubicle to prepare you for the rigors of leadership.
The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality, that they were temporary caretakers of institutions that would span generations. They cruelly ostracized people who did not live up to their codes of gentlemanly conduct and scrupulosity. They were insular and struggled with intimacy, but they did believe in restraint, reticence and service.
This is very much my argument in favour of continuing with our (Commonwealth) constitutional monarchy. The Royal Family is raised like this (and it even takes, sometimes), providing some institutional continuity much pooh-poohed by "progressive" republican elements in our society. To wit:
Today’s elite is more talented and open but lacks a self-conscious leadership code. The language of meritocracy (how to succeed) has eclipsed the language of morality (how to be virtuous). Wall Street firms, for example, now hire on the basis of youth and brains, not experience and character. Most of their problems can be traced to this.
When things are ALL about results it can be efficient, however ruthless efficiency is no way to live. It's also no way to run a business, i.e. for "shareholder value", but this is the trap that publicly owned companies run into. It is almost universally true that short-term solutions are not good in the long run. The corollary is that long-term things have no solutions, just management.
"Nothing ever ends", Watchmen fans. If I could, I'd be setting things up for my kids and great-grand kids, and it once was that the rich (elites) had estates, Duchies, Earldoms, etc. that were handed down. You can look at this as outmoded feudalism, or you can look at it as a multi-generational company providing some certainty for the tenants.
Yes, it's de riguer to be against "the Establishment", but please somebody explain to me what that is these days? The banks? Publicly-traded companies; if you want stop the ridiculous bonuses that executives get, buy up enough stock to vote them down. Unless you'd rather just smash things because life is insufficiently handed to you. Political elites? Don't make me laugh; they are merely opportunistic and know they have a limited shelf life.
Of course there is some shadowy world-wide oligarchical elite and with enough money there is a whole lot you can influence and get done. After that though we're in Yertle the Turtle territory and if the plebes have a real problem things can go seriously sideways in the planning cycle. That's Entropy, and a multi-generational elite will account for it. They would not, for example invade Iraq and have nothing to show for it but a lot of dead and injured troops and worn-out equipment.
We have something to the best of my immediate knowledge fairly unique in history: the USA as incipient Empire which is controlled by the new meritocratic elite. Accordingly it is REALLY bad at the Empire stuff, since that requires a long-term goal and the personal investment of the planners. The latter you will most certainly not get with a "democracy", so expect more schizo foreign policy behaviour from whatever passes for "America" these days.
The Road to Hell is paved by the good intentions of the new intellectual elites in academia (who make their way into politics; hello, Obamas) and the media. The problem of course is the Marxist/socialist cant that people are prefectable, they just need to be shown the way. The old-school view is that most people are fucked and it was your Duty to lead them by example. You will rarely if ever hear a social progressive talking about Duty, as it's viewed as archaic and patriarchal or something. Not surprising, because serving as an example severely circumscribes your freedom to do what you want. The mechanical difference between the approaches is that Example leadership pulls, the Nanny State pushes.
Different elite paradigms, different problems. There is theoretical upward mobility today, but in the old days there was in the Feudal system too (William the Conqueror, anyone?). All systems bloat and ossify over time, and the newer meritocratic version has merely done so more quickly and by different mechanisms. The much railed-against credentialism of today is the prime means of keeping the riff-raff in their place. As each generation gets positions, they increase the qualifications required beyond what they needed to get there. Forty years ago you could get in pretty much anywhere with High School (admittedly they actually taught something useful back then), but that generation turned that into a BA, and in many cases they now want post-grad and experience.
That's enough from me on that (for now) but the more I think about it the more real opportunity there was under the ancien regime vs. the current system. I'll close with an axiom to keep in mind when people talk about "equality": free men are not equal, and equal men are not free.
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