Yes, it’s true that some people get their thrills from the lives of others, but it probably gives them a break in routine from Elvis sightings, and it does me absolutely no harm. I don’t even support the celebrities, while people are continually taking my tax money to build some place for the athletes to play. Surely the fans could chip in a little something instead?

Meritocracy is another matter. I notice the article didn’t say that Britain had unqualified elites. The author was complaining that the elites had disproportionately attended more rigorous schools. This does not immediately sound like a major problem.

All large human societies are ruled by someone, and generally those who rule have more in common with each other than with those they rule, but for stability and prosperity, there are certain limits.

There has to be a way in. Complete equality of opportunity is a chimera, but you can offer sufficient equality of opportunity to drain the intelligent and energetic away from the malcontents. This I suspect the West achieved in the aftermath of WWII–which is why Jane’s discontented kids are dullards studying to be parole oficers instead of very bright kids studying to be revolutionaries.

You can’t leave dolts in charge. This doesn’t mean they can’t have wealth or titles. It DOES mean they can’t be permitted to make critical decisions. Here, despite some fine sets of credentials, I’m not sure we’ve done so well.

Rank has responsibilities as well as privileges. If a ruling class can do things the masses can’t, it also must do things the masses needn’t. There is an old H. Beam Piper novel in which someone observes that “you have an aristocracy which is ashamed of its privileges and shirks its responsibliities” and then pronounces the society doomed. Here, I think we’ve outright failed.

And perhaps all I’ve done is restate John Campbell’s dictum that for government to work, responsibility must be commensurate with authority. I persist in thinking that much of what is called anti-intellectualism is the response of inarticulate people to our failure to adhere to Campbell’s dictum.

As for the schools, the standards went first. Once literally anything could be taken seriously as art, poetry or music–somewhere between dada and Picasso–it took the students less than a generation to decide the whole thing was arbitrary, and they were right. In those schools where the instructors DID adhere to a standard and expected to be held to it, the rot has not yet set in. To get students to take a standard seriously in art, music, literature or philosophy, you’d first have to get the professorate as a body to do so.

You’d need firing squads.

And you really need to specify the ideas. The idea that young girls should aspire to become clones of Britney Spears is not particularly intellectual.

OK, that’s an extreme case, but there are a lot of ideas that are created and spread around, and they aren’t supported by intellectuals (any definition) and some of them don’t require a lot of intelligence to understand.

I’m sure you can see how this idea of intellectual could cause a lot of hostility – it’s mentioned in the reference to the article’s author’s father’s book. If you have this tiny minority who alone influence culture and society, and especially whose control cannot be affected by the less able majority, you have a recipe for revolution.

The idea that all students should and can go to college (US)/university(CDN) has been cited here as one of the reasons we so badly lack skilled workers. Students don’t all seem to have been swayed by the ‘everyone in university’ idea – there are waiting lists to get into some of the trade and technical programs – particularly those with guaranteed jobs that are expensive and difficult to offer because of the equipment needed and the fact that many of the teachers can and do earn far, far more in industry.

There’s an old idea about the dignity of all honest work that seems to have been lost, even though some students are more than happy to take a technical program with no pretenses to intellectualism and a nearly guaranteed job at the end.

Who was it who said it was better to be a good plumber than a bad philospher?

I suppose I’m saying that there are other things of value besides intellectualism, and perhaps there would be less fear/jealousy/generally negative views of intellectuals if other talents were recognized.

Jane and I are biased but in opposite directions! I would leave out the word cultural in her definition.

The articke Jane linked to discusses inequality. The book “Economic Facts and Fallacies” by Thomas Sowell has a chapter on Income facts and fallacies and it turns out to be very difficult to define inequality.

Years ago, the rich took Grand Tours of Europe and everyone else stayed home. Now the rich fly first class and stay in 5 star hotels, the rest of us fly economy class and stay in 3 star hotels or backpacker inns. Inequality is still there but now we do have wide spread opportunity to travel overseas.

Does this relate to Jane’s essay? Perhaps we could say that the consequences of economic inequality are decreasing but the consequences of inequality in intelligence are still large.