We face difficult times ahead and Americans are under pressure to recognize the singular nature of our society and our interdependence. While the strong will survive, we need to be able to understand and respect what it is that makes one strong. This will require a recognition of a great ill in our society, that of illiteracy - cultural illiteracy.
One of the more difficult things to explain to people is that America is an elite society. It is both elite and redundant. It is an extraordinary combination, and it is one that renders the American way of life very robust. America is an elite society in that there are things that work here in ways they do not work anywhere else. Countries elsewhere struggle to achieve the level of scholarship we possess, the level of technological, scientific and medical achievement we possess, the low level of legal corruption we possess. And we move along pretty much taking such things for granted.
It is the openness of our society, a real functioning and robust meritocracy, that makes such things possible. When we look at the question of illiteracy and the staggering numbers of Americans who ride along naively in the belly of the advanced beast we are. One wonders why we don't simply collapse. We have so many Darwin Award winners, so many examples of idiocy and ignorance in large numbers of our population, that it seems that disaster is just around the corner. How many times have you seen articles like the following:
Herald-Leader
Friday, May 24, 1996WASHINGTON - Less than half of American adults understand that the Earth orbits the sun yearly, according to a basic science survey. Despite flubbing such questions, there is enthusiasm for research -except in some fields such as genetic engineering and nuclear power that are viewed with suspicion.
Only about 25% of American adults got passing grades in a survey by the National Science Foundation of what people know about basic science and economics. Even fewer of those surveyed felt they were well-informed about technical subjects.
The worst showing came when those surveyed were asked to define scientific terms. Only about 9% knew what a molecule was, and only 21% could define DNA.
But even more fundamental questions stumped man: Less than 1/2 knew that the Earth orbits the sun annually. In a test of environmental understanding, 1/3 of Americans surveyed understood the effects of a thinning ozone layer, 14% could identify locations of ozone holes, and only 5% could give a scientific explanation of acid rain.
Surely we are on a path towards ruin with so many ignorant Americans. No we are not. That is because we are an elite society. Such people never get to touch the switches and shift the gears of America. The very idea of somebody other than an expert running things is unthinkable to most Americans. If there is anything true about American culture it is that we value our meritocracy. We willfully subject ourselves to tests in every aspect of our lives. From our very youth, we are prepared to prove ourselves in competitions, rankings, ratings, questionnaires, surveys and evaluations of all sorts. We immediately toss over our cultural upbringing for 'objective' superiority. We celebrate winners and berate slackers and loser. We admire overachievers and we all suffer fears of performance anxiety. In sports, at work, in church, at the movies, in the stock market, on our IQs. In these myriad ways Americans generate a thousand ways to tell us whether or not we are getting what we deserve. We discriminate. It keeps the cream rising to the top.
We are also a broad and deep society. We have a strong second string. Surely there are intelligent and capable people who often make foolish or immoral mistakes at the top of our society, but we are as a culture not afraid to kick them out and replace them. Nor are we often at a loss to provide a replacement. That is because we are a redundant society. American redundancy doesn't seem quite obvious but it is the greater of the two strengths.We desire choice, and we decry monopoly. We create communities of interest in parallel. We maintain standards in a decentralized manner, we don't require central control of everything. We enjoy the delight of independent discovery and we take full pride in individual achievement even when it is an achievement that has been accomplished by others many times before. We have managed to comport ourselves to understand that there will always be another champion - and our willingness to try creates a nearly endless supply. Americans push for redundancy, we build it into our culture's desire for pluralism, for variety. The more the merrier.
There is much about the very function of redundancy that makes for robust systems of every type. No old man dies with the recipe, there are always alternatives. And because we pride ourselves on individuality we like to see how another kind of style or path leads to first class performance. We feel more confident when we know there are rivals to the throne, yet in redundancy is frustration. Avis is certainly as good a Hertz but remains number two. Many individuals reach a pinnacle of talent yet never merit the spotlight. These are unsung heroes, and many Americans live this way - most in fact, without the recognition of fame and renown yet with equal and sometimes greater skills that those who lead. But there is often uncertainty and doubt. People often feel irrelevant. Are they?
A good deal of what is called 'social injustice' is actually the result of intolerance for our meritocracy, and many people who feel they should be getting more respect fail to recognize that their choices deny them, not injustice.
A lot of attention is given to the political argument that we have greater and greater disparities between the haves and the have-nots in our society. It is true, but I think that it is a mere consequence of this being a larger society than it ever was. Surely peasants in China are far more distant to the leaders of that country than we are to ours. The aim of that argument though is one in support of increased social welfare, but within our culture of achievement we know very well that people do make choices and nobody is compelled to be irrelevant. It remains a matter of 'political incorrectness' to suggest that the marginal play the major role in their failure, but we remain a nation of great educational and social infrastructure much of which is actually irrelevant to the core of our civilization. We endure a sort of cultural pollution - an oversupply of Disneylands and mock-Disneylands, edu-tainments, new age mysticisms, bohunk sensibilities and retrograde 'moralities' filling the American mind with nonsense.
The disparities between the haves and have-nots are not merely income disparities but cultural disparities. We sustain too many alternate cultures. It has fallen out of fashion to suggest that these are subcultures, because of acceptance in the mainstream of the tenets of multiculturalism. What is implied by the social injustice disparity argument is a permanence in the upper classes, that there is no real mobility, as if merit didn't count. What perhaps is more true is that those on the outs tend to resemble themselves more than those on the inside. You don't hear unemployed street youth speaking Latin and Greek at the bodegas of the ghetto. Because having four years of Latin always works to improve the mind. I think it is inescapable that what Allen Bloom wrote to our disbelieving ears was true.
It annoys some folks that we have a single society but not multiple meritocracies. Their expectations are out of sync with reality. To take multiculturalism's premise that all cultures are equally valid is to expect that all every cultural ambition leads to the top of our society. Except that they don't; many are dead ends. This is not an injustice it is a consequence of our society's collective discriminations - those necessary to give our meritocracy teeth. Our understanding of winners and losers cannot be abused for the sake of some vagueries of 'equality'. Equality is equality of deed, it requires the evidence of achievement. It requires the understanding of molecules and knowing the Earth revolves around the Sun. So long as we are to keep our meritocracy in place, this has to be the case.
What's important remains important. It isn't that suddenly all Americans have lost their minds, but that we are exposed to more and more who apparently have no need to use theirs for any significant purpose. And in so doing we have become inured in the main to our own mediocrity. More of our society is given over to frivolity - the reality of competence and excellence seems obscure. In fact it is. Far too many of us get over without understanding what is we're actually supposed to know. We cannot long continue to be an elite and redundant nation if our leaders cannot assert with confidence that our second team, our coming generation doesn't know the same things they know.
This weekend I found myself reading Dickens aloud to my youngest daughter who wondered why it is that I only like to watch old movies. The language of great English literature is on the verge of unrecognizability, and on my iPod is a BBC production of Coriolanus. It is, unfortunately obscure to the ear. I think in the end I will have to read it. (interestingly enough, Google will not correct any approximate misspelling of 'Coriolanus') which only proves further the point of obscurity. We cannot allow those great works which define our civilization to fall on uncomprehending ears, we must insist that a greater number of us recognize what it is that makes us strong.
We should not be hostile to 'diversity'. When we are discussing differences we must distinguish between expression and values. Surely there are different ways of expressing the same value. We don't want conformity of expression, but conformity of values. But if 'diversity' implies a different hierarchy of values then we must discriminate and we will.
I am not particularly satisfied that all of America can survive the dumbing down of its masses. An elite that feels comptemtuously isolated in its acquired knowledge and power will inevitably betray. That is human nature. And so Wall Street millionaires who work incredibly complex yet ultimately corrupt manipulations shouldn't surprise us any more than Senators who work indecipherably dense sinecures into boring legislation. The obsucrity of intelligence will destroy us from the top down if we become an elite nation with no redundancy.
As I exist in a fringe of a highly literate continuum called the blogosphere - we already know that our mainstream media has reached beyond the tipping point. That tipping point in which it becomes more profitable to cater to the relatively weak-minded and pretend to be serving their best interests. I have grown up in the era where this has been the case longer than it has not. I have always been prepared to be part of an energized cadre of social mountain climbers. But that is not enough. If those who know will become an exceedingly small core, then they lose the virtue of belonging to a nation. It is not enough to be informed and correct.
It is upon all of us to connect with our elites, to respect our meritocracy and to address ourselves to a culture of singular values inheriting all which has instructed us before. We must subordinate and discriminate against the relativism that pretends to elevate by declaration. We must be evidence-based in our evaluations and insure a deep redundancy of skills across the country. We must not be afraid to tell the truth.
I have faith that those who seek the elevation and continued strength of our society will make the efforts required to call out right against wrong and that they will do so without shame. It is, in the end, the only thing that will save us.
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