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The Privilege Is Nothing; It’s the Entitlement That Counts
If you haven’t already, take a few minutes to listen to Jay Nordlinger’s Q & A interview with Heather Mac Donald regarding the sad state of affairs at Yale University and on the importance of humanities, when taught properly. Mac Donald also made a potent — and much-overlooked — point that having the opportunity and the means to study for four years at a residential college under the tutelage of dedicated scholars and teachers is the height of privilege. To make academic demands on such professors regarding matters of which you are (almost by definition) ignorant of is arrogance of the worst kind.
The irony of the matter is that it’s hard to imagine a group of people more obsessed with hunting-down privilege and more blind to their sense of entitlement than modern college students. Privilege has no moral content: It’s neither good nor bad, but simply something people have to varying degrees, and in varying ways. If one realizes that one is privileged, the proper response is to be grateful and humble and (ideally) see it as an obligation toward others. In contrast, entitlement — the belief that one is owed something (perhaps, a privilege) — is almost always toxic and the only valid response is to drop it immediately.
That the world is filled with injustice, suffering, and despair is nothing new (a fact that great literature can reinforce). That so many of us are so relatively free of such things should be seen as a privilege that — depending on your teleology — we’re either blessed or fortunate enough to have. None of us are entitled to it and we should act accordingly.
Published in Culture, Education
This is such an important point. I will definitely listen to the podcast.
Heather MacDonald is always so helpful on the most controversial subjects. Those of us who acknowledge we are privileged know that ultimately we have been blessed, and are thus humble when we speak of it. When we speak humbly, we are also acknowledging that we only have so much to do with the blessings that come our way. We may work hard, but we don’t do it alone.
A good pod cast, but also very predictable. Is there any such discussion with a liberal (leftist) commentator? Rachel Maddow? Fred Hiatt?
As I listen to the podcast, it occurs to me that there is a simpler explanation for the demands the Yale students and their peers at other schools. Milton, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Spencer are much harder to read than the third-rate writers to whom Ms. Mac Donald alludes. Students are naturally lazy about their readings; I know this because I too was such a student once. They will naturally agitate for and welcome easier-to-read, albeit inferior, materials in the reading list. The major English poets are simply too much of a pain to read.
Drlorentz’s razor: Never assume malice when laziness will suffice. (with apologies to Hanlon)
Tom,
The deconstructionists started as outcasts in the Philosophy department. Then they migrated to the English department finding naive and fertile ground. Once the movement had metastasized it then spread into the History department. The Historians, the best of them at least, fought back and are still fighting back. Unfortunately, when the government, granting agencies, and the administration is against you, it is really uphill. This is the result:
Advanced Placement Tests To Hide History of Religion and Islamic Jihad in Europe
This is absolutely unacceptable. If we get a chance to counter-punch and Trump is a counter-puncher, then pushing this back must be a priority.
Holding to the highest standards as Heather Mac Donald wishes goes without saying.
Regards,
Jim
Mr. Meyer, it is precisely your reasoning, word for word, & point for point, that leads young men & women to do the insane things they do on campus. I suppose you’re quietly saying that everyone does or should agree with what you think follows from your outline of the situation of modern youth & its predicament–act accordingly is a way of saying, act according to unspoken principles to which you or the assembled Ricochetti cotton. But the distinction between yourself & the more progressive folks is not to do with your observations or reasoning–it’s to do with those principles. I do not believe that, thought through even a little, what you think is education agrees with what your institutions of higher education have to offer.
Morning Tom, Titus, and all,
We are supposed to be mad or disgusted with the “screaming girl”, because she lacks gratitude, she lacks understanding and insight into her privilege. I have yet to find that arena where insight is modeled, I could use someone to model insight for me. She is a young person who has grown up in affluence and who has lived in a culture which prolongs adolescence and robs young folks of purpose. She is also a customer (in an unpleasant fashion) complaining about the product she has been sold. The goal of the university has not been, for ages, to provide an education, it has been to make money. Where does that leave Jay and Heather, perhaps they should say the society was lost when we stopped having students learn Latin and Greek, so they could read the Illiad and Aeschylus in Greek.
For nearly 100 years students, particularly those students who were the first students in their family to go to college, choose their courses and majors based on practical matters. These choices are not those of Philistines, but the choices of folks who live in the not so privileged worlds. It is a type of blindness that places the love of the literature of the greatest writers above solving the problems of living in the material world. My mom, who like many in the post-war, joined a Great Books group, so it is not that she did not seek out the writers Jay and Heather praise but when you don’t have indoor plumbing until after you have gone to nursing school, you definition of privilege is a bit different. To be disappointed with Rubio abut his criticism of philosophy is misplaced. The luxury of philosophical study comes only after the practical parts of society have become so secured by culture, that humans have the time to study and reflect in a organized fashion. Only after the soldiers have kept the barbarians from your door, after the farmers have grown your food, the engineers have delivered your water, and the craftsmen have built your home and school do you have the chance to take the time to savor the words of others. That you place the philosophers above the farmers, craftsmen, and the others who have provided the space where you live is at least as great an ingratitude as demonstrated by the “screaming girl”
Hello, Mr. Beck!
I’d say one problem with education simply belongs to America: Your Founders could not stop talking about how education, improvement, morality, & religion were going to go together like a horse & carriage. Not so. In the first generation of educated people after the Founding, the scientific theory of race & politics emerged! It did not get better…
As Coolidge famously said at the quincentennial anniversary: There is no progress past 1776. Every change in political principle thereafter must be a return to the despotism & cruelty of the past. There’s not much progress in religion & there seems to be less than none so far as great writers are concerned. Really hard to square with a nation always so moveable, so tied up with the future, so desirous of new things, & so reasonably persuaded of the many improvements of modern times…
Nowadays, conservatives who say they follow the Founders are often apt to believe that the purpose of higher education in America–as opposed to technical or vocational education, which is not higher education–is conservative. It is not to produce new knowledge & spread it, whatever MIT might think, but instead to try to learn the forgotten knowledge of the pre-American past.
But these are few: Most believe there is no higher education–there is just job training adorned with hobbies. Most conservatives-libertarians-Republicans now seem to believe more market-driven professionalization is the future of higher education, as though they wanted to destroy the American heritage.
Americans are apparently not being taught the principles of 1776 anymore–not with any seriousness. Apparently, most of us here are agreed that they should be. That makes it necessary to recruit a class of educated people to fight the intellectuals & to prepare others to do the work of education. So philosophy has become an emergency in America, in some paradoxical way, because of how much pseudo-philosophy is on the lips of every ideologue.
Then, too, the principles of 1776 were very persuasively thrown into the attic of history by the Progressives & most people believe them; it takes something like the Christian’s or the philosopher’s contempt for majority opinion to think it’s possible & worthwhile to live up to the past.
Further, the principles of 1776 were self-conscious inheritors of a philosophical tradition of natural right, full of problems & promises for the future. Indeed, the Founders themselves were distinguished as the only political class in modern times to benefit from a serious education in political philosophy.
Finally, there is a need for philosophy to deal with one part of the generational conflict that’s part of American partisanship. People old enough to remember America before scientific government & intellectual contempt incessantly broadcast–well, they’re very hard to turn around to any kind of friendship with the younger generations, whose experience of life is very different: It has always been peace & progress with them… Moderation also is necessary rot recruiting young ambition–that, too, requires philosophical acumen.
Afternoon Titus,
I am not sure I am following your thoughts. I am suggesting that Jay and Heather are not asking, “how did the Athenian schools of philosophy emerge”, or what type of culture affords the luxury of reflection, and what is needed for the wisdom philosophers and the wisdom of culture to become the habits of the average man who begins to respect the wisdom that may come with age and that the customs of his time might have merit which is not instantly seen. I wish they would have asked themselves how it is that they writers and works they love and value came to be. Why do some times and cultures produce the giants. Then, they could begin to ask how is it that we loose our sense of appreciation for what has value, and come to value the more ephemeral tastes.
This is a fair point, but also realize that philosophers, including natural philosophers, are the ones who made it possible for the engineers and craftsmen to do their work. Thinkers like Pythagoras, Archimedes, and Euclid laid the foundation for the engineering achievements that followed. Political systems also sprang from the minds of thinkers. You would not have a computer to share your thoughts without the work of natural philosophers like Einstein, Heisenberg, and Dirac, which was prerequisite to the work of hardware and software engineers that designed your device and the fiber optic network that connects it to other related devices.
There’s only so much that can be worked out by trial and error. Systematic thinking and knowledge have got us the boons of modern civilization in a way that hunter-gatherers of yore could never have imagined. Without those elements, the craftsmen, soldiers, and engineers have no way of knowing what to do with their hands.
I’d say, no political community produces titans. They just appear. Sometimes they are destroyed; it’s even possible to think they might be precluded from coming into being by some communities. But all communities can do on the bright side is to foster or tolerate great works.
But as for the decline of civilization, certain things seem to me fairly obvious, so that they’re a good starting point. Community breaks down–I believe we have agreement on the dangers of individualism or atomization here, even though I think heroes are needed to fight against it & you think they are the problem.
More importantly, Xenophon was a philosopher-general.
Afternoon drlorentz and Titus,
drlorentz in the comments on other posts I have made the same complaints that Jay and Heather are making. I have asked, “why can’t the young folks appreciate the important parts of literature and art with the same passion I have. What is wrong with them?” These complaints, including my own, get nowhere. So I am suggesting that they are not asking more important questions, questions to which I have no answers. Why do cultures cease to treasure its own art or philosophy, history, and begin to act like it hates its heritage or is indifferent to its heritage. To me the problem is that we don’t understand culture or community, and which elements are essential to the health of these core aspects of human life.
Concerning engineers vs. philosophers, I am suggesting that the culture that produces philosophers has also produced the specialized skills and responsibilities which include all the other professions which have freed the philosopher from farming, building, etc. As an aside, perhaps, Socrates was a better philosopher because he was also a warrior. So from 8,000 to 5,000 BC, Europe was a hodgepodge of emerging farmers, hunter gathers, herding groups who flow in and out. If they are like the tribes we know and have recorded, they were not asking themselves about the nature of a “good man”. If your were to ask them what is a good man, they would point to one who delivers on his obligations, who is a good leader/hunter/builder, who is a good teammate, who follows the path of the tribe. There would be wise men, but their wisdom and respect for their wisdom would have come from a life of action. So it is after the emergence of the state where size and the numbers of peoples have made the community structure of the tribe break down, that we have the stability and surplus of farming and the ownership of land and property that also produce artists, and the wealth to own art. It is in the state, where we have philosophers, however even in the state the philosophers are more dependent on the warriors than the other way around. Greece resisted Persia because of Sparta and the Athenian Navy and not because of its intellectual strength. So when Jay and Heather are passionate about literature, I agree, however I want their ideas on how to inspire a change in the culture which will bring back a love of lasting truth.
Mr. Beck, there’s a brief & ugly answer to this. Democracy. The more conformism you’ve got, the less will you have any of the things that people used to call culture.
The more people are or believe themselves to be the same or incredibly similar–the more they are inclined to believe they should live similar lives & that there is no principle that could bring conflict. Ultimately, it’s about getting along not getting anywhere in particular…
What we call civilization is a mix of political freedom & the arts & sciences. The former part doesn’t seem to progress; the latter never seems to stop progressing. They have different requirements & origins. The mix is inherently unstable-
Afternoon Titus,
Your comment is really good. I am going to think about it before I jump back.
Any society that wants to avoid starvation is going to depend on the arts & sciences. The navy is not possible with the art of the shipwright nor the phalanx without the arts of wood- & metal-working required for armor & arms. Once that starts, it’s off to the races, revolutionizing the community.
Philosophy, in that situation & only that situation, becomes the only reliable ally of reasonable people. The enemies are many. The devotees of the progress of the arts & sciences are as sure that their progress can never have really bad consequences as the devotees of the old pieties are sure that their old ways never needed changing. It is true that community used to be stronger; also that most people were suffering & dying like people today wouldn’t believe. Trying to find some way to marry these two very different things & the factions that champion them is very unpopular. Whenever someone sets up shop as non-partisan, he’s uniquely exposed…
I take your point. Of course, philosophers don’t have time to think if they’re busy planting and reaping, although there are people like Eric Hoffer who was able to find time for philosophy while working as a longshoreman. On some level, culture is a luxury.
Nevertheless, even the hunter-gatherers were able to find the time in their busy schedules for art, e.g., the cave paintings of Altamira and Lascaux. Without systematic thinking we would still be stuck back there. Primitive cultures remain primitive because they are poor in culture, not because they don’t have enough people interested in working with their hands. There remain a few primary cultures, like the Bakhtiari people, who have not changed substantially over the centuries. This is what you get when you have many good herdsmen but few good thinkers. A society that only respects the field of action is stagnant.
At Thermopylae the Spartans prevailed because of ideas, not military strength. Sure, they were superb warriors but that would not have been enough. When you’re outnumbered more than ten to one, brute strength isn’t going to cut it: μολὼν λαβέ.
Bakhtiari, indeed!
That shows what happens when a member of the tribe abandons herding in favor of other pursuits.
Like being herded?
No comment since I’m not a football fan.
I am, but you don’t have to be to have seen’em huddle-
Afternoon drlorentz,
I thought tackles were modern natural herders warding off wolfish defenders. Concerning the ideas which shaped the fighting ethos of Sparta, I think they were the antithesis of philosophical ideas and more the cultural ideas of status, shame, honor. Those ideas are not in my grouping of reflective reason used to achieve understanding.
Afternoon Titus,
If I am understanding you, I take your point that Western government which from the start gives individuals (really just those defined as citizens) equal votes has over weighted democratic forces which can not calm our envious heart and can not react quickly enough to technological change. This might explain how England at 1900 was the most culturally civilized society in history and after WWI it was a spent force. The war exposed the hollowness of the class system, the foolishness of the ruling class, and how the hoped force age of the “Futurists” was more like a machine gun than a machine for good.
I think that the loss of community with the eclipsing of tribal structures has not been repaired as cultures have become modern. To me this loss is a flaw which will cause Western cultures to implode. I think it is part of the nature of man to imagine that greener pastures are out there and that I may be getting short changed. Technology with its rapid change feeds into this. Here the philosophers do address what is of lasting value, family, purpose, community, and do good work. However, with the exception of the Stoics, many philosophers have questioned the foundations of the societies in which they live. It is one thing for a warrior to curse God, it is another when men of status question God’s existence, or writers mock the apparent inconsistencies of God. The average Joe’s morals are those of habit not self reflection, when the philosopher says that the average Joe is a chump for his superstition he is eroding the habits which society needs to survive. It is part of our nature to doubt our gods, when we lived in tribes, the universality and exclusivity of our beliefs identified us and held us together, if we think there is a God who knows and judges we will act differently, when philosophers and others throw this into question they allow the selfish nature of man to bloom. If Buckley Jr. can’t get Yale to wake up and defend truth and beauty, then we need to have Jay and Heather stretch their imaginations to give us solutions and not complaints, I complain enough on my own.
Mr. Beck, I agree about the complaining & solving things part. I wish these people would start schools. Do you know the late M. Stanton Evans’s work? He not only turned conspiracy theory into scholarship–but he taught journalism to a lot of people so that they know what it means to research suspicions & be a servant to no public enthusiasm or hysteria nor no piety of the intellectual classes. They could do that, too–they’ve got influence & prestige…
Now, as to our discussion. Yes, people end up enslaved to technology in their minds. It’s not about how much time people spend in front of the screen–it’s that the screen starts shaping their minds & they do not even know it.
So democracy, as you pointed out, put limits on individualism in the days where politics was serious, if terrible & cruel. In our times, democracy has become theoretical or philosophical. Everybody’s his own philosopher these days… & that’s the real truth about why no one will listen to other people.
Science is taking over people’s minds–scientific language is taking over every aspect of thinking, including about human things, & everyone defers to the authority of science even though most people have no interest in learning science. Public discourse is simply taken over, so that even the fantasy of democracy, the inability to stop worrying about public opinion–even that is done with all the pretense of innocence of science in polling…
Those are the habits-
It’s more accurate to say scientism is taking over. As for science in polling, there’s little science in it. Social “science” deserves the scare quotes. Hence the application of science to human affairs is mostly “science.”
Mr. drlorentz, you’re never going to persuade mankind of that. I guess I’m never going to persuade you that people who are serious about science had better become serious about what it really means to democracy…
Maybe we ought to have a track specifically for trustfunders that specializes in the liberal arts and specializes in the study of original sources, like St Johns College. I don’t want inherited wealth (as opposed to the dominant nouveaux riches) do dominate our society, but I would like them to form a strong counterculture.
Well, in America the wealthy have always been counter-cultural at that level: Who paid for & founded & ran all the institutions by which Americans imported the great achievements of what in Europe we call culture?
But as you pointed out, Americans are on the move & on the make–not many people stay rich–there are always new ones, & now they’re not becoming cultured as they become richer–they become more emphatically American: More about work & productivity, more about securing advantages or getting things done or solving problems. Less about any refinements. Who in America is going to say that that’s wrong? So also with the jeans & tee billionaires: Who’s going to say, that’s wrong!
Afternoon Titus,
If you have time could you write a post on how the screen is changing us and since we are unaware of the extent of this change it is an even greater hazard. I would love to contrast the views of those analyzing this from a societal and philosophical view point with all of the tech smart folks we have here.
Thanks again, Titus