Why Do They Do So Well?

There's nothing wrong with élites per se. Even the most egalitarian of human institutions will spawn an élite of some sort, and in most cases, it is this élite which makes history, spinning it out as if it were a particularly recalcitrant fibre being made into some monstrous tapestry.

But because élites are so dominant, because they are the core of every republic and the key to getting things done, they are also the most likely cause of evil. If the élite go bad, the rest of society will find themselves looking up at a quickly-descending boot-heel, or perhaps a preparation for descent into hell.

So it is good to have a regenerative principle for the élite, a healthy and gradual replacement of establishment by the less-established, in turn supplanted by the non-established or dis-established. This creates the constantly shifting quasi-stability that is characteristic of a measured locomotive gait, as opposed to the rigid but twitching spasm that comes with a too-prolonged upright immobility.

The élite always does well because they're supposed to. We, society at large, create them from ourselves; where they are, our ancestors were or our descendants will be. When the so-called 99% calls upon the 1% to share out the wealth, it is as ludicrous as if the car that depends on a microchip were to start trying to cannibalise the metallic gold in that chip.

Go for chip replacement, not cannibalisation. Destroying the old without replacement will destroy you too, you teeming masses of the 99% who desire the downfall of the 1%. Me, I'm with the part of the 99% that doesn't mind as long as the 1% don't desire -my- downfall.

Elitism Fails

In my previous post I pointed out how egalitarianism fails. Because all humans are different, giving humans equal rights on the basis of a presumed 'core humanity' is actually a distortion of logical contracts, since you are then dispensing something in an inequitable fashion. If all people regardless of virtue, performance, skill, or potential are to be treated the same way and have the same rights, you are looking at something which is exactly identical to the core tenets of some religions — salvation is by a single act and the afterlife is available to all who believe. Except, of course, that this problem is compounded by trying to do it in the all-to-obviously-inequitable material world.

But if all humans are not equal except in some specious idealistic sense, then logically some humans may be 'game-winners'; that is, given all the scenarios that they are exposed to, they have the qualities to achieve a 'win' condition in each of them. There may be no such humans, but there will certainly be humans who are game-winners in some situations. Conversely, there may be some humans who are 'game-losers' in every situation, and certainly, some who are game-losers in at least one situation. In fact, some game-winners for some situations might be game-losers in different situations.

This means that for each simple situation, there will be an elite of those more likely to win. For complex situations, there will be an elite of those more likely to win in all the possible sub-scenarios within the complex situation.

So elites automatically form, and therefore, we have to say elitism must exist — at least in the sense that we recognize that elites are winners and by that fact worthy of being recognized as such. In human societies, if those winners also happen to make us winners (e.g. a very successful hunter in a hunter-gatherer society), then we give them bonuses such as status and power (or huge salaries), medals and awards, stuff like that.

But elitism fails us at one remove, and that is if we unwittingly allow transference of elite privilege — we automatically allow a kind of halo effect to give unwarranted prestige to those associated with the true elite human by kinship, network, clan, or other relationship that is not relevant. There would then be people in the elite group who have not done anything for the community in which they have been raised to the elite.

The only way to compensate for this failure is if they are, after being raised to the elite, able to make others winners using the status or acquired privileges that they now have. So, for example, a poor man who marries into a rich family and is given rich-family associations and privileges could use any influence he has thus attained or accrued to benefit the poor. A son of a rich merchant, landholder, or industrialist, having inherited power and wealth not through his own doing could then use that inheritance to benefit others.

Given the human situation, all these advantages actually come from having people 'below you' in elite status (i.e. the various 'scorecharts' that determine how elite you are). Therefore there is conceivably a moral obligation for elite status to be justified if you didn't earn that status yourself, because your status depends on other people. In the old days, they called this noblesse oblige, the obligation of nobility.

In the modern age of egalitarianism, the use of that term is often shrouded in sarcasm and even an air of impropriety. But there are indeed modern nobles, dispensing state-level power and patronage sometimes because of unearned status. Consider the case of a member of Parliament or equivalent representative in a parliamentary democracy or equivalent state. Supposing he runs for office and is returned unopposed. Then he now has elite status without having done anything for anybody. He now has a moral obligation to do things for people.

This is especially true if such a person ends up with far greater access to 'elite bonuses' such as communication with higher powers, material resources, information and suchlike. Every bit of those trappings of the elite status should carry with it a concomitant and commensurate responsibility towards those in general who don't have such things.

So does elitism fail? Well, there is a tendency for humans to be very happy with privileges and not so happy with sharing them around or making use of them for other people. That is why altruism should be more widely appreciated, since it is at the very least a sign of the realisation that elites need a community to be elite in.

Egalitarianism Fails

Egalitarianism is one of those philosophies of the community that defeats itself. In principle, it's a lovely ideal: equality in the social, political, economic, and legal sense. For all to be equal under the law, in society; for all to have the same access and the same treatment; these are the hopes of egalitarianism.

But the problem can be reduced to a simple point. There are only two levels at which all humanity can be said to be equal: all or nothing. At any other level, there would be differences. So, as many philosophers have pointed out, Death is the great leveller — it makes all things equal, whether by complete loss of all things or by the attainment of all things.

It's of course possible for society to make the vain attempt to defeat the natural biological tendency to discriminate and differentiate. It never works out, because all humans are not equal and never will be.

But, hang on, someone might argue, why can't we do things like make the poor richer and feed the hungry? If everyone were equally well-off, that would be good, wouldn't it?

Actually, yes, it would be. But humans aren't like that. Godliness with contentment is great gain, said a 1st-century philosopher. But humans in general are not gods, and are never content. Nobody wants to be equally well-off; at the very best, we want to be differently well-off. Give any two people the same amount of resources, and they will definitely do different things with them, for all humans are not equal.

So at what level are humans equal? Surely we have a common humanity?

No, we don't. We can try for things like equal opportunities and equal rights, but the most adept (in both good and bad ways) among us will always come out on top because they are better at manipulating things. No two humans are the same; ergo, no two humans are equal. Forcibly making things equal has Harrison Bergeron consequences.

But even in a Harrison Bergeron society, where the authorities make everyone behave as if they were equal, having that authority makes a person different. Only in utter anarchy would things be equal, if you define anarchy as having no person in authority over another. That, however, is worse. The removal of societal hierarchies leads to biological competition, which is even less forgiving and less egalitarian.

Which brings us to the debate on elitism in education. If egalitarianism fails, then elitism triumphs. Education systems must be set up to channel the elite, not corral them or confine them or Harrison-Bergeron them. If people are 'more fit' for some purposes, so be it. It doesn't mean the rest have to make themselves worse by spending time in envy and discontent.

But they will. Because humans are like that.

When City & State Are One (Part III)

Tonight I was at the Atlantean Chirurgeons' Society 50th Anniversary Dinner. The physicians and surgeons of this professional association had their celebrations graced by the High Priest of the White Order himself, and his associated bodyguard of battle sorcerers armed with clairaudience, clairvoyance, and wands of ballistic opposition.

The High Priest gave an interesting sermon, which was full of intelligent comments about the place of professional associations with respect to priesthoods (or at least, as most will say, the White Order which is dominant in this land). Despite the fact that his father is the Thunderer, feared and beloved by the masses, his elitism tonight was focussed on the many physicians in his immediate consanguinity — uncles, cousins at various removes, his sister.

It is a benign and active elitism which prevents Atlantis from sinking beneath the waves. Despite cynicism (the dogs!) and skepticism (the agnosticism!) it is widely acknowledged that most of it is benign, has benign motives, has brought universal education and healthcare and shelter to the populace. It is also a kind of elitism that only a city-state can produce.

What is unique about city-state elitism? In one word, consanguinity. If the talent pool and the gene pool are both small, then the natural or social selection of mating pairs leads to elitism that seems to be nepotistic, but really isn't. It is a fact that the talent is concentrated to a large extent in a bunch of people who happen to share a lot of genes. The small talent and gene pool simply means that those with the genes to succeed at optimal levels will do so and will also be related.

They will also ascend to the top of the meritocracy insofar as intelligence is both an environmental and genetic trait. And the perks of position, the kratos and bia, will ensure that many of those who are similar in outlook (possibly because of shared traits both social and genetic) will continue to stay in the running for such apical positions.

When City & State Are One (Part II)

When the city and the state are one, the focus tends to be on urban geography and urban economics. In a sense, the hinterland of the state is outsourced, and negotiations between the city-state and her neighbours create the embedding environment of countryside and sources of physical sustenance.

Atlantis used to have pig farms and vegetable farms. It still experiments with horticulture and minor agriculture, but the vast majority of its inputs are from outside. Atlantis itself is mostly tall towers filled with wizards and would-be wizards; even the peasants and farmers deal in minor enchantments and live in towers. Most of Atlantis now appears to be what some people might call a service economy: an economic state based mainly on the trading of services of one kind or another.

What has this got to do with education? Well, standardised quantitative education is an excellent tool for stratification. You can actually use grades to create a gradient, from those who do well in national examinations and will one day be priests and wizards, sorcerers and generals; to those who do not do so well and will become hedge-wizards and kitchen magicians, drivers and cooks. Note, however, that even a cook can become rich if he is a great cook.

Drawing Lines (Part V): Elitism vs Meritocratism

A meritocracy is a power structure in which ruling authority is delivered by those deemed most meritorious. The problem of course lies in the definition of merit. History shows us that merit tends to be defined by those in power; the trick then is to 'sell' the idea that merit can be made definitive and objective.

This trick is of course best executed through the use of numbers and statistics, since (for some reason) they are seen as more objective than words and ideas. This means that a proper meritocracy needs a national or global statistic-delivering system which produces statistics correlated to performance in things seen to be of utilitarian value. Examinations are a possible example of one such system.

An elite is of course the most meritorious or most powerful subgroup in a sociocultural entity. Looking at the previous two paragraphs, it is obvious that meritocracy can be used to establish an elite, and that an elite has by definition a large stake in establishing a meritocracy.

The difference between elitism and meritocratism is therefore a subtle one. An elitist believes that there is nothing inherently wrong with cultivating, developing, nurturing, maintaining, and establishing an elite. A meritocrat believes that there is nothing inherently wrong with using a system that identifies elites and then cultivates, develops, nurtures, maintains and establishes them. The difference lies in the fact that an elitist assumes the presence of an elite a priori, while a meritocrat believes that starting from whatever you have, you can develop one.

Elitism in Atlantis

Atlantis, socioculturally speaking, is metaphorically a lot like Australia. It is a huge island with civilisation on its margins and a vast desert inland. Occasionally, in that vast desert, you come across desert-adapted humans and animals.

This is what leads people to look at Atlantis and say, pseudo-knowingly, "Ah, I know what makes Atlantis tick! Its governance proceeds entirely from two kinds of elite cultures — the green and black edge of civilisation inherited from a colonial past, and the aboriginal desert in shades of brown. After all, these places are where all their most powerful officials come from, and there is nothing else."

This is the consequence of not drilling deeper into the history and sociocultural underpinnings of a particular society. The elite cultures (or sources of the elite, just as bacterial cultures are sources of bacteria) of Atlantis actually are three in number, for things do tend to come in threes. It is something many academic observers overlook, even while they are mouthing their reasonable and extensive conjectures about what makes Atlantis run.

You see, like Australia, the land (whether the green and black edge or the brown desert vastness) is illuminated and made magical by blue sea and sky, golden sunlight, and the rich and peculiar red rocks of the depths. It is a foolhardy academic who looks only at the land, and not at what makes that land come alive.

Why am I saying all this? Well, over the weekend, I was re-reading a few books written by some Australian academics (or journalists, or other people with a propensity for writing). They looked at the statistics on Atlantean scholarhoods (no, one should not abuse the word 'scholarships') and came to the conclusion that 95% or so of the ruling elite came from either the green and black edge or the brown desert. They then raised examples of the ruling elite, especially in the areas of education, culture and finance, the administrative service, the military, and so on.

At which point, I keeled over laughing, because the only persons they mentioned who were actually from those two large kinds of elites were the Thunderer and his get; the rest either were immigrants (well, one was) or were proud children of the blue, gold and red. (And even the Thunderer's brothers and some of his descendants fall into this group.) These researchers had used a statistical probability to assume (incorrectly) that there was a 95% chance that all these examples should come from the two 'main' elites'.

What they hadn't taken into account was that the true elite in this huge Atlantean population are very rare: they are occur with a statistical frequency of about 1 in 20,000. And the most powerful network within this true elite, the source of what makes this whole place sing with life, is from the third elite source. All you have to do is open the Scroll of the Priesthood, whose every edition lists the places of power (about 500-600) and who controls them (about 250-300), and you will see that this is true.

So how does one develop that kind of rare but extremely powerful influence? It is quite simple, like most things of this kind. You are born to it, you buy into it (increasingly popular and not to be denigrated), or you serve faithfully for a while until you become eligible for membership (easier than you think). You can also study really hard and try not to be tempted by the sheer quantitative dominance of the other elites.