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Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed
Nov. 21st, 2002 10:33 amI don't normally make entirely-quoted posts, but I found this Mises Institute article to be a fantastic commentary on intellectual elitism:
It is true that the common man doesn't have a great deal of intellectual curiosity. Nor does he question the accepted practices of his society unless he perceives them going in the wrong direction (as many ordinary people do today). So the intellectual class separates itself from the masses and holds them in contempt. This contempt then transfers to the economic system that has done the most to benefit the masses by providing what they want and elevating the economic status of the providers.
Thus many intellectuals deeply resent a system that lavishes rewards on those who in some way serve the masses and withholds rewards from those who see themselves as above such things. They hate it when the marketplace makes Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez rich girls. They grit their teeth at how Danielle Steel sells more books than they could ever dream of selling.
How can a system be just, they go on, when professional athletes who didn't even finish their underwater-basketweaving university degrees sign multi-million dollar contracts while they, with their Ph.D.'s, languish in relative poverty? Is it fair, they demand to know, that Bill Gates is worth more than entire third world countries? Intellectuals blame capitalism for all this, and much more.
Capitalism rewards celebrities, however, because of the purchasing power of the masses, people the intellectuals see as beneath them. They cannot admit that they either can't or won't participate in this system and that the fault is theirs, not the celebrities or the masses. They believe this system rewards the "wrong" values, and this leads them to want to impose their values on the system as a whole—whether in the name of more tasteful music (by their favorite artists or composers, of course), better books than Danielle Steel's (theirs, perhaps), a better operating system than Windows (we're waiting), and so on.
The whole article is far longer, and (to my brain, at least) more interesting. :)
It is true that the common man doesn't have a great deal of intellectual curiosity. Nor does he question the accepted practices of his society unless he perceives them going in the wrong direction (as many ordinary people do today). So the intellectual class separates itself from the masses and holds them in contempt. This contempt then transfers to the economic system that has done the most to benefit the masses by providing what they want and elevating the economic status of the providers.
Thus many intellectuals deeply resent a system that lavishes rewards on those who in some way serve the masses and withholds rewards from those who see themselves as above such things. They hate it when the marketplace makes Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez rich girls. They grit their teeth at how Danielle Steel sells more books than they could ever dream of selling.
How can a system be just, they go on, when professional athletes who didn't even finish their underwater-basketweaving university degrees sign multi-million dollar contracts while they, with their Ph.D.'s, languish in relative poverty? Is it fair, they demand to know, that Bill Gates is worth more than entire third world countries? Intellectuals blame capitalism for all this, and much more.
Capitalism rewards celebrities, however, because of the purchasing power of the masses, people the intellectuals see as beneath them. They cannot admit that they either can't or won't participate in this system and that the fault is theirs, not the celebrities or the masses. They believe this system rewards the "wrong" values, and this leads them to want to impose their values on the system as a whole—whether in the name of more tasteful music (by their favorite artists or composers, of course), better books than Danielle Steel's (theirs, perhaps), a better operating system than Windows (we're waiting), and so on.
The whole article is far longer, and (to my brain, at least) more interesting. :)
