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comment by asdfoster
asdfoster  ·  3167 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Post-Capitalism Has Begun

The following is long, rambling, only tangentally related to the article, and I don't agree with all of it. But for whatever reason these are the words that my hands decided to type this morning/late evening in response to inspiration from this article. Some of you might find it interesting so I figure that I might as well share.

Each of these "long cycle upswings" involve increased automation and the average human getting pushed upwards into a job that involves more intellectual expertise. This is clearly what has happened in the past, in spite of the preventative measures placed on society by that time period's privileged class. However, as the author points out, this process appears to be stalling this time.

The author claims that this is because the current privileged class is too powerful, but I think that it's more likely that there is another force at work. I don't see the current elite being any more powerful than the robber barons of old. Bill Gates's wealth is small compared with John D Rockefeller (adjusted for inflation), and the people of today have more information and more of an ability to organize than ever.

Instead, I hypothesize that we may have reached the limit of intellectualization of the average human in our society. Not every human can survive this most recent wave of automation, because in order to do so, they must possess an intelligence and education that allows them to reach this next set of opportunities. I believe that as humanity in western societies stands today, either due to our nature or our culture (although my money is on culture), we are unable to take that next intellectual step and truly embrace this wave of automation.

You need not look past the average high school, or the average media served towards school children to see the anti-intellectualism that is rampant in our culture. Many of the protagonists in television today and in the past have held a contempt for math, science, and schooling. Many of the cultures in highschools across the nation shame the "nerds" in favor of those with outdated physical prowess. This has been true of our nation since the last long cycle upswing that the author discussed.

The author is also correct that there are barriers to entry in place, and until the general public has the time and resources to pursue this higher education instead of clamouring to fulfill the lower rungs on their hierarchy of needs, we will continue to stagnate. If we want to escape this current rut and truly join the future society that we are starting to see sparks of on the internet, and that this author wishes to be a reality, we must enact social policies that enable lower class individuals to seek higher education without the risk of crushing debt and without having to sacrifice feeding themselves or keeping themselves healthy. But that will only enable people to reach higher, it will not convince them to. You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make them drink. Indeed, similar barriers of education and lack of free time existed for the previous upswings, but we were able to overcome them. Until we fix our society and culture's antiintellectual tendencies, these opportunities will not be seized and we will continue to stall.

The following quote from the passage supports my contention:

    Faced with the possibility of creating gene-sequencing labs, they instead start coffee shops, nail bars and contract cleaning firms

Instead of pursuing an education while they are young, our privileged children (those that have free time) are instead pursuing gossip and fashion and other trivialities that thrive in the types of businesses that they eventually are employed by. And unfortunately, these human proclivities towards gossip are made easier to indulge in thanks to the very technology that we should be trying to master. We must be sure to master our technology, or else the few that have will make slaves of the rest.

This upswing is stalled by the powers that be, just like every upswing before it, however it is also being stalled by our culture, and human culture and behavior is a hard thing to change. But fortunately, it appears that this change is coming. We are beginning to see more and more the celebration of the nerd and the cool things that nerds can do with computers, technology, math, and science. This progress, however, is slow. If we are to continue advancing our society, we must embrace this trend on top of enacting the social programs that will allow us to act on it.





edricarica  ·  3167 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thank-you for posting this.

You have managed to articulate - much more eloquently than I could ever hope to - what has been running through my mind for what seems like forever.

My cultural background is European, not American, but its culture is characterized by exactly the same anti-intellectualism you describe.

I remember my first trip to India when I was high-school age. All my (Euro) friends and I were interested in was wallowing in pop culture. But in India, every kid I met was desperately striving for intellectual betterment (I have since met kids from India's super elite and learned that this is not the case amongst them).

The moment of insight came when I was sitting at a roadside cafe in the evening drinking an underage beer, and watching a group of kids my age huddle around a streetlamp with a math textbook. It suddenly hit me: the Indian kids knew what they had to do for humanity to progress. My friends and I in the west didn't have a clue - we were just wasting time and space.

I'd like to say that that realization made me seize the day and start living my life to the full (via an inspirational montage sequence). It didn't, sadly. But I did notice a marked change in my attitude to acquiring knowledge. Whereas I'd always tried to hide my bookishness in the past, I began to be unembarrassed to be seen reading, or caught using a long word. Because we need to get past this anti-intellectual thing in the west, or we'll lose all we've worked for.

OK, my tangent was infinitely more rambling than yours!

I guess all I really wanted to say was: thank you for sharing your thoughts. They really resonate :)

ao  ·  3167 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    If we want to escape this current rut and truly join the future society that we are starting to see sparks of on the internet, and that this author wishes to be a reality, we must enact social policies that enable lower class individuals to seek higher education without the risk of crushing debt and without having to sacrifice feeding themselves or keeping themselves healthy.

Great point. The privatization of higher education and profit incentives create a toxic environment where people feel like they have to do something which will get them a job, putting the economic incentives ahead of the educational ones. And who can blame them? 100k of debt is a huge mountain to overcome and severely limits the abilities of a young generation. A good first step would be providing a cheap (or free) education/healthcare system which would incentivize education and economic advancement (with no debt). Only then would we see more people pursuing careers and educations that interested them.

As for the anti-intellectualism perpetuating youth culture, I feel that it is a problem that cannot be overcome quickly. It is a longterm game where change is slow and meticulous. This does not mean that there cannot be change in the broad social spectrum. We don't need everyone to be an engineer, or mathematician to move forward as a society. The issues just have to be brought to the forefront so people can become aware of change and the future. If more people become aware and conscious of the world around them, change is bound to happen, it is just a matter of getting the ideas out there and acting upon them.

user-inactivated  ·  3167 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    As for the anti-intellectualism perpetuating youth culture, I feel that it is a problem that cannot be overcome quickly. It is a longterm game where change is slow and meticulous.

Yes. It's been an issue for a while now. Arguably it's been ingrained in this country since the beginning.

wrangler  ·  3165 days ago  ·  link  ·  

As an 18 year old who just graduated high school, I have noticed this:

Where people used to hate on the nerds, my age is beginning to appreciate the intellect that nerds have.

People from lower income have a culture that is aimed away from intellectual values and more toward the gossip and fashion that you talked about.

I am not saying this applies to the whole of my generation, (and I will note that I come from a city where most everybody's parents are engineers or have careers that require an advanced education) but it has at least started to take a rise and I can't wait to see what we have to offer to the world.

user-inactivated  ·  3167 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Good post. Question: you mentioned that in today's schooling, there's a marked increase in anti-intellectualism. Do you have any sources about this? Not arguing with you, am curious instead. I'd also like to see if there are any Hubskiers in their teens and early twenties reading this thread, and what they'd have to say about this. I'm a bit older, so am out of touch with whatever kids in school are facing in this regards.