We don't have a tyranny of experts. What we have is a BUREAUCRACY. Kids learn it at a very young age, when they master the technique of baseball statistics; so many home-runs, so many RBI's, so many innings pitched. When the organization of statistics becomes an end in itself, you get a bureaucracy. Now, when a bureaucracy loses all sense of DUTY, that's when the generalized corruption of everything sets in, because the only interest that counts is the self-interest of the bureaucratic end. But people can't see it that way, because the bureaucratic end becomes so complex and elaborate and scientific and prestigious and progressive or whatnot.
But wait-a-minute! Isn´t universal college education a SOLUTION to a problem, in that you have to find stuff for people to do, when machines are making it less necessary for people to actually do stuff? Your Granddaddy may have worked at the Ford plant, but there ain't no more Ford plant to work at, so you go to college! No?
I want to supplement it with a bit of psychological commentary. Everyone understands that each individual human being has different intelligence, interests and abilities. Whatever is not natural is probably due to interaction.
It follows that the worst idea is to try to serve everyone the exact same information at the same time. People are always going to handle it in a different way.
It's also obviously wrong to expect the same effects of any teaching on any two different individuals.
Under these circumstances, it's necessary that adults first deny reality, and many obvious parts of reality, in order to have anything like "public education."
This denial of reality is also an imposition of the managerial state on each person with respect to any other program: public health and the sewer system, public housing, public finances, public transportation, central banking, the patent system and copyright system, among many other things.
Here's my main psychological point: What are the effects of denying reality? In some people probably shame. In others, melancholy. In others, psychotic violence.
I think those effects are not a bug but a feature of this operating system of Managerialism.
They really try to make people crazy. And that's probably their greatest success so far.
In some ways I suspect that the lessons learned from mass production of consumer goods have been inappropriately applied elsewhere, such as in education and medicine. Uniformity means lower per-unit cost.
The implicit idea that economic utility — production and consumption — are both the pillars and pinnacles of human purpose seems to be an axiom of managerialism and of course its philosophical antecedent: materialism.
My son and his friends, high schoolers, laugh at those choosing college. (He will be a certified welder when he graduates.) One of their sayings is '...college is for stupid people...'
Hard to argue with that, when graduates graduate with large debt, and no real skill.
Can express this only in the English we spoke back in the old neighborhood. This "philosopher" John Dewey was a freakin' retard.
In addition to emphasizing the importance of "mental activity" in education -- a groundbreaking insight -- he uttered bullshit like this: “By making the present activity the expression of the full meaning of the case, that activity is, indeed, an end in itself, not a mere means to something beyond itself; but, in being a totality, it is also the condition of all future integral action. It forms the habit of requiring that every act be an outlet of the whole self, and it provides the instruments of such complete functioning.”
Was this moron the uncredited father of postmodernism?
Managerialism evolved out of the Second Industrial Revolution, when it technology made possible organizational levels larger than any human could control without machines. The people able to organize and control those machine systems (analog computers, telegraphs and telephones, radio, etc.) and more importantly, the capital behind them, were the managers. The political expression of this was progressivism, which represented the unification of machine systems, standardization, and scientific organization of life. Public education was designed to habituate the masses to managerial rule and (originally) to cull from those masses prospective managers to groom for power. Authority still rested in the hands of those who passed through prep schools and the Ivies, for a while, until after WWII when the managerial caste displaced the WASP aristocracy, relegating them to a ceremonial role in the emerging system of neoliberal managerial control through a bureaucracy funded by efficient taxation.
The basic role of public education remains the same, conditioning the masses to accept managerial rule, but the role of the masses has changed from producers to consumers as the managers have shifted the economy to financialized rent-seeking. What is called ‘woke’ is the assimilation of leftist critique into the neoliberal system, what is called ‘classical’ is, sadly, the system similarly ameliorating conservative sensibilities.
As someone partially educated outside the US system, and at a time when only 5% of the population went to college, I've never thought much of the US system. If 50% of the population has a degree, what does that tell us? I think it tells us we are giving degrees to people of average intelligence given normal distribution. What is the point of that? And as someone who for a while made a living teaching/researching at a university, I can say I despair of how they function, always growing the admin side, always raising tuition faster than inflation, always lying to the gullible students taking out debt for that worthless degree.
The Prussian education systems was the response to reshape the instinct of the German people, when the men were more apt to dessert than defend their country from Napoleon. So a long in term indoctrination of uniformity was instilled.
Loved this article, you might find facets of our documentary Severed Conscience of interest. We examine the hypnosis that ensnared so many, and still has them glued to social media and unable to exercise their rational faculties. https://culturalcourage.substack.com/p/severed-conscience
I want to point out to that as we grow more dependent on managerialism grows, satire evaporates. How many Mark Twains do we have today, poking fun as the idiocy of the Fauci and the credentialed class.
I had to stop after half the articles, as it became more and more repetitive pointing out the SYMPTOMS - whereas the article labels them (ERRONEOUSLY) causes.
The number of journals/degrees/... is simply a symptom of the mechanistic linear sequential reasoning mind of man trying to manage GOD ALMIGHTY'S CREATION. The FIAT CURRENCY PONZI SCHEME being the supercharger pushing this agenda forward. Creating in its path all THE UGLINESS only THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN can produce - with permission of GOD ALMIGHTY showing THE RESULT of the madness of EVE'S endeavour (ADAM giving her a helping hand for some "goodies" from her or the madness itself) since THE GARDEN OF EDEN to manage GOD ALMIGHTY'S CREATION - leading to .... THE TRUTH! The crescendo of THE MADNESS cannot be overlooked - it will be denied till the bitter end though by those staying DISOBEDIENT - anymore and only GOD ALMIGHTY knows when the end will be here.
Here is a link to a video resembling the fallacy of diagnosing symptoms as causes. Whereas there is only one cause - OUR DISOBEDIENCE TOWARDS GOD ALMIGHTY:
... and by GOD ALMIGHTY'S INTERVENTION here is a sermon (however imperfect, as delivered by a fallen men) offering advice how to find the pathway to GOD ALMIGHTY'S ANTIDOTE through THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AND THE HOLY SPIRIT for EVERYONE to pursue. GOD ALMIGHTY'S WISDOM MIGHT GRACE AND PURPOSE are on full display, but as prophesied by THE LORD JESUS CHRIST VERY VERY VERY FEW will truly find it! TAKE HEED EVERYONE!
Compulsory or universal education gradually developed beginning in the 16th century in Europe The ancient China had institutional education primarily to Support an imperial bureaucracy With one system for the aristocracy and another for the common people. Horace Mann, No doubt a Massachusetts liberal, Fostered the idea of free public education in the United States that John Adams further promoted. And yet One of mankind's greatest achievements, The Roman Empire as the foundation of civilization worldwide today, Did extremely well without universal education. Go figure!
“Mann's commitment to the Common School sprang from his belief that political stability and social harmony depended on education: a basic level of literacy and the inculcation of common public ideals.”
I guess World Wars I and II kinda proved him wrong about education ensuring "political stability and social harmony". Not as if he claimed this in medieval times. He was already wildly wrong during his lifetime.
The modern expert class has invented its own false religion, which only it can interpret, to maintain power as technology and social forces enable subsidiary, decentralized solutions. Their enemies are the Christians who have both a competing faith and one with a claim to truth, the uncredentialled sea of "true" experts who can offer a nugget of wisdom on social media and what remains of the independent minded. To defeat it, first build around it. As a sports team normally builds a new stadium before demolishing the old.
Stay your course, bold headliner. And please don't forget our dear friend Parkinson, particularly on equality's malignant triviality. And L. Peters and R. Hare and the Dunning-Kruger finalists everywhere, every day advancing Scientism through Struggle.
BTW, I've recently rediscovered the TV show Northern Exposure as part of my desinsitivity training. Did you ever watch the episode with the traveling circus bus breakldown titled "Get Real" (season 3, episode 8, December 9. 1991)? :)
One of the jokes in that episode is from the circus ring leader, an academic refugee, explaining that modern physics is incomprehensible but magic can be controlled. Made me chuckle.
We don't have a tyranny of experts. What we have is a BUREAUCRACY. Kids learn it at a very young age, when they master the technique of baseball statistics; so many home-runs, so many RBI's, so many innings pitched. When the organization of statistics becomes an end in itself, you get a bureaucracy. Now, when a bureaucracy loses all sense of DUTY, that's when the generalized corruption of everything sets in, because the only interest that counts is the self-interest of the bureaucratic end. But people can't see it that way, because the bureaucratic end becomes so complex and elaborate and scientific and prestigious and progressive or whatnot.
"a bureaucracy loses all sense of duty" - you just described the longhouse - nailed it.
No, it’s universal college education that gave us these twisted and useless things…
But wait-a-minute! Isn´t universal college education a SOLUTION to a problem, in that you have to find stuff for people to do, when machines are making it less necessary for people to actually do stuff? Your Granddaddy may have worked at the Ford plant, but there ain't no more Ford plant to work at, so you go to college! No?
Lol no
It's a fine attempt at explaining the thing.
I want to supplement it with a bit of psychological commentary. Everyone understands that each individual human being has different intelligence, interests and abilities. Whatever is not natural is probably due to interaction.
It follows that the worst idea is to try to serve everyone the exact same information at the same time. People are always going to handle it in a different way.
It's also obviously wrong to expect the same effects of any teaching on any two different individuals.
Under these circumstances, it's necessary that adults first deny reality, and many obvious parts of reality, in order to have anything like "public education."
This denial of reality is also an imposition of the managerial state on each person with respect to any other program: public health and the sewer system, public housing, public finances, public transportation, central banking, the patent system and copyright system, among many other things.
Here's my main psychological point: What are the effects of denying reality? In some people probably shame. In others, melancholy. In others, psychotic violence.
I think those effects are not a bug but a feature of this operating system of Managerialism.
They really try to make people crazy. And that's probably their greatest success so far.
I would add my endorsement to your thesis.
In some ways I suspect that the lessons learned from mass production of consumer goods have been inappropriately applied elsewhere, such as in education and medicine. Uniformity means lower per-unit cost.
The implicit idea that economic utility — production and consumption — are both the pillars and pinnacles of human purpose seems to be an axiom of managerialism and of course its philosophical antecedent: materialism.
My son and his friends, high schoolers, laugh at those choosing college. (He will be a certified welder when he graduates.) One of their sayings is '...college is for stupid people...'
Hard to argue with that, when graduates graduate with large debt, and no real skill.
Can express this only in the English we spoke back in the old neighborhood. This "philosopher" John Dewey was a freakin' retard.
In addition to emphasizing the importance of "mental activity" in education -- a groundbreaking insight -- he uttered bullshit like this: “By making the present activity the expression of the full meaning of the case, that activity is, indeed, an end in itself, not a mere means to something beyond itself; but, in being a totality, it is also the condition of all future integral action. It forms the habit of requiring that every act be an outlet of the whole self, and it provides the instruments of such complete functioning.”
Was this moron the uncredited father of postmodernism?
Dewey’s arcane abstractions…
Remove most federal funding for education. Let universities lend their endowment funds as student loans. Diversity of education returns.
Great essay!
Managerialism evolved out of the Second Industrial Revolution, when it technology made possible organizational levels larger than any human could control without machines. The people able to organize and control those machine systems (analog computers, telegraphs and telephones, radio, etc.) and more importantly, the capital behind them, were the managers. The political expression of this was progressivism, which represented the unification of machine systems, standardization, and scientific organization of life. Public education was designed to habituate the masses to managerial rule and (originally) to cull from those masses prospective managers to groom for power. Authority still rested in the hands of those who passed through prep schools and the Ivies, for a while, until after WWII when the managerial caste displaced the WASP aristocracy, relegating them to a ceremonial role in the emerging system of neoliberal managerial control through a bureaucracy funded by efficient taxation.
The basic role of public education remains the same, conditioning the masses to accept managerial rule, but the role of the masses has changed from producers to consumers as the managers have shifted the economy to financialized rent-seeking. What is called ‘woke’ is the assimilation of leftist critique into the neoliberal system, what is called ‘classical’ is, sadly, the system similarly ameliorating conservative sensibilities.
As someone partially educated outside the US system, and at a time when only 5% of the population went to college, I've never thought much of the US system. If 50% of the population has a degree, what does that tell us? I think it tells us we are giving degrees to people of average intelligence given normal distribution. What is the point of that? And as someone who for a while made a living teaching/researching at a university, I can say I despair of how they function, always growing the admin side, always raising tuition faster than inflation, always lying to the gullible students taking out debt for that worthless degree.
The Prussian education systems was the response to reshape the instinct of the German people, when the men were more apt to dessert than defend their country from Napoleon. So a long in term indoctrination of uniformity was instilled.
Loved this article, you might find facets of our documentary Severed Conscience of interest. We examine the hypnosis that ensnared so many, and still has them glued to social media and unable to exercise their rational faculties. https://culturalcourage.substack.com/p/severed-conscience
I want to point out to that as we grow more dependent on managerialism grows, satire evaporates. How many Mark Twains do we have today, poking fun as the idiocy of the Fauci and the credentialed class.
Dear Dr. Briggs,
I had to stop after half the articles, as it became more and more repetitive pointing out the SYMPTOMS - whereas the article labels them (ERRONEOUSLY) causes.
The number of journals/degrees/... is simply a symptom of the mechanistic linear sequential reasoning mind of man trying to manage GOD ALMIGHTY'S CREATION. The FIAT CURRENCY PONZI SCHEME being the supercharger pushing this agenda forward. Creating in its path all THE UGLINESS only THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN can produce - with permission of GOD ALMIGHTY showing THE RESULT of the madness of EVE'S endeavour (ADAM giving her a helping hand for some "goodies" from her or the madness itself) since THE GARDEN OF EDEN to manage GOD ALMIGHTY'S CREATION - leading to .... THE TRUTH! The crescendo of THE MADNESS cannot be overlooked - it will be denied till the bitter end though by those staying DISOBEDIENT - anymore and only GOD ALMIGHTY knows when the end will be here.
Here is a link to a video resembling the fallacy of diagnosing symptoms as causes. Whereas there is only one cause - OUR DISOBEDIENCE TOWARDS GOD ALMIGHTY:
https://www.youtube.com/live/0UhdkAgDqa0?si=hYovUSAgYr8IfCnu
... and by GOD ALMIGHTY'S INTERVENTION here is a sermon (however imperfect, as delivered by a fallen men) offering advice how to find the pathway to GOD ALMIGHTY'S ANTIDOTE through THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AND THE HOLY SPIRIT for EVERYONE to pursue. GOD ALMIGHTY'S WISDOM MIGHT GRACE AND PURPOSE are on full display, but as prophesied by THE LORD JESUS CHRIST VERY VERY VERY FEW will truly find it! TAKE HEED EVERYONE!
https://youtu.be/VH8L--VwgMY?si=b_j7cdx2p15XwP3J
AMEN HALLELU-YAH - SOLI DEO GLORIA!
Compulsory or universal education gradually developed beginning in the 16th century in Europe The ancient China had institutional education primarily to Support an imperial bureaucracy With one system for the aristocracy and another for the common people. Horace Mann, No doubt a Massachusetts liberal, Fostered the idea of free public education in the United States that John Adams further promoted. And yet One of mankind's greatest achievements, The Roman Empire as the foundation of civilization worldwide today, Did extremely well without universal education. Go figure!
Very good insight, neatly crystallized
From the PBS piece on Mann:
“Mann's commitment to the Common School sprang from his belief that political stability and social harmony depended on education: a basic level of literacy and the inculcation of common public ideals.”
I guess World Wars I and II kinda proved him wrong about education ensuring "political stability and social harmony". Not as if he claimed this in medieval times. He was already wildly wrong during his lifetime.
Kudos! A remarkable feat to compellingly summarize such a complex problem in a couple of pages.
The modern expert class has invented its own false religion, which only it can interpret, to maintain power as technology and social forces enable subsidiary, decentralized solutions. Their enemies are the Christians who have both a competing faith and one with a claim to truth, the uncredentialled sea of "true" experts who can offer a nugget of wisdom on social media and what remains of the independent minded. To defeat it, first build around it. As a sports team normally builds a new stadium before demolishing the old.
Stay your course, bold headliner. And please don't forget our dear friend Parkinson, particularly on equality's malignant triviality. And L. Peters and R. Hare and the Dunning-Kruger finalists everywhere, every day advancing Scientism through Struggle.
BTW, I've recently rediscovered the TV show Northern Exposure as part of my desinsitivity training. Did you ever watch the episode with the traveling circus bus breakldown titled "Get Real" (season 3, episode 8, December 9. 1991)? :)
Funny, I’ve also rediscovered Northern Exposure. Great characters - Chris in the morning is fantastic!
I think season 4 is when Greater Redneck lost interest.
Never seen it.
One of the jokes in that episode is from the circus ring leader, an academic refugee, explaining that modern physics is incomprehensible but magic can be controlled. Made me chuckle.
Yes