🗺️ There have never been so many literate and idiots (1 Viewer)

[Old School]

by Dmitriy Kosyrev

Sometimes, the dumbest question, simply because it is unexpected, leads to good answers. Which, at the very least, awakens thought. The question is: why are there so many idiots around? Note: In this case, we are talking about American society, although we are also talking about the societies of other Western countries. In other words, we have a roll call of American authors, including those who are intelligent and worthy of respect.
No, well, we see and hear it too. And we are talking about the degeneration not just of the ruling elite but of the educated class and the governmental apparatus of the United States, the E.U., Australia, and the rest of Canada. The most stupid statements are being made, those that concern Russia, but not only. Although many people have hope that there are intelligent people there too, they sit quietly somewhere, but they can also take power.

And the two authors-bloggers are not about government structures but everyday idiocy, which did not exist before. Here is a scene outside the Israeli embassy in Washington during a demonstration in support of Palestine. A man in a full U.S. Air Force uniform douses himself with gasoline and flicks a lighter for a long time. And for some reason, a security guard from the Secret Service takes him in his sights and stands there until everything ends badly. The author's conclusion: it is a symbol of today's America. One person is absorbed in his ideas of absurdity and self-destruction, and the other, a representative of the authorities, reacts to what is happening in the wildest way. Then, the author lists many more, including "who knows whose" cocaine is in the White House. In general, everyone at all levels says and does wild things.
The second blogger is about humor. He asks where the great American satirists have gone. It turns out that they can't say a word – they will harass you. For the word "Negro" and for anything else that used to be ridiculed. And when a nation loses its sense of humor, it isn't good.

Let's admit that the examples of idiocy here are random, pulled out of the flow of events. But there is a general feeling of the onset of such an idiocy – and an incredibly aggressive idiocy at that.
And there is at least one utterly unexpected explanation for this. One of the publicists Finds in a book published in 1943: Joseph Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. It contains a simple idea: if there are more and more people in society with higher education in the humanities, people who are far from actual production, then these people can begin to create problems for everyone. Especially considering that they know that they are not particularly needed, unlike, for example, a truck driver, who today earns much more than a professor of humanities.
Under Schumpeter, there were only one million students in the United States. Now, 66 percent of the population has at least a college degree (elementary higher education or something like that).
And what problems do this cause? Dislike of society in general, but especially of those members who do something understandable and useful. The desire to break this society by relying on its monopoly in the humanitarian sphere is in journalism and informatics. Attempts to pull the financial rope to their side create economic distortions and deindustrialize it.
In other words, a ruling class is being formed, far from actual production and everyday life. And in this class, the ideas of a "reboot of everything," that is, a world revolution, begin to ferment. And if not all of them, then at first of certain spheres and industries, those with their science (work experience), their authorities, and people of merit. In short, the class of useless humanitarians is becoming a new revolutionary class, a terrible destroyer of everything it can reach. And if it is impossible to eradicate it, then you can at least endlessly harass people – today all over the world – with all sorts of campaigns for anything, but more often against anything.

And this was predicted, we repeat, by a clever economist back in 1943.
Here, we need to recall the experience of the USSR. The society there was quite dynamic. And it was full of heated debates, which only specialists remember today. Should we strive for the ideal in the form of a 100% higher education in the humanities simply because it makes a person's life brighter and more meaningful and a person more perfect? Should such education be continued throughout one's life with the help of clever books, newspapers, and magazines and with intense pressure on those who do not want to be enlightened? How to combine the vocational school system with the rest of the system?
And we are still arguing about it. But never before in these debates has it turned out that the clever Austro-American economist and his followers are repeating the grumblings of our "backward" grandmothers at the entrance: everyone has become very smart and educated, and there is no one to replace the light bulb above the entrance. And there is a feeling of significant rightness in this grumbling.