Robin DiAngelo, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Ibram X. Kendi can be explained using Rob Henderson's "Luxury Beliefs" thesis. But of course, Steve is now old enough that he is not really interested in new ideas but just likes playing the hits over and over.
I was hoping that Steve would review Rob Henderson's book Troubled for the discussion on foster children. If nature dominates in life outcomes, then children raised in foster families would not be such outliers as explain in the book.
Rob Henderson's life is an argument for nature > nurture. Also, this was an odd statement from the Amazon blurb: "He argues that stability at home is more important than external accomplishments, and he illustrates the ways the most privileged among us benefit from a set of social standards that actively harm the most vulnerable."
I'd be interested in knowing who he considers "most privileged" and how social standards benefit them "at the expense of the most vulnerable." It sounds like he's become well-versed in the narrative of people from stable, intact (i e. white bourgeois) families having a privilege that is unearned. And apparently this goes a step further: the standards are actively harmful to "the most vulnerable."
So not only is your white bourgeois privilege unearned but you actively harm others by mere espousal of social standards. Rob Henderson, of course, by virtue of his difficult upbringing, will stay out of the cannibal's pot.
The idea of luxury beliefs of the elite is almost all of the freshmen at Yale when Henderson was a freshman were from two parent families but those same students and their parents would never encourage the lower classes to get married and not have children until they are married.
C. Wright Mill’s “The Power Elite” was officially part of the catechism back in the 60s. It made a big impression on me. I kept it for decades, moving it around the world in boxes, but I must have given it to a used book sale. We had a list in Manhattan of the officially elite called the social register, didn’t we?
I too have a soft spot for Chomsky. He is wrong about many things but he makes his arguments from pure conviction and seems to have little interest in status or material goods which is a good sign.
I used to scoff 20 years ago at his ideas about “manufacturing consent” but have thoroughly changed my mind. I’ve seen a few waves of awful ideas take hold over the years. And while there is no lizard-people conspiracy at work, a few people in a few institutions thinking the same way can do a lot to move the dial on public opinion.
I’m also nostalgic for the few remaining 20th century guys like Chomsky and Charles Murray who are scrupulously civilised in debate and never go ad hominem.
It could even be argued Curtis Yarvin copped his idea for the Cathedral from a combination of "Manufacturing Consent," and Burnham's "managerial class."
I found Cowen's article to be quite bizarre. Where is his evidence that "elites" (a word I anyway refeuse to take seriously) have more or less prestige at one point in time than in another, still less that any individual has had any effect on this by performing more or less well in that role? It's a particularly odd subject for Sailer to pick up on as his own "noticing" output is so data-driven whereas Cowen seems to have none.
If one thinks about the early 1950's, it was easier to take "elites" seriously because almost all of them had served in World War II. However, the response of the elites of Vietnam really turned the average Americans against the elites across the political spectrum.
I guess T.C. meant that Chomsky's provocations and especially "Manufacturing Consent" undermined the elites and made people sceptical of them. (The Halberstam book perhaps more so?) Certainly the book title alone became a catchphrase like "the medium is the message". But it kind of works in the other sense that he undermined elites by undermining himself, I agree an obvious member of the elite, by being obnoxious about the Khmer Rouge, or the "grassroots" nature of the Cultural Revolution.
But the post took me back to college years, when - how to put this as simply as possible - in service of a little salamander, which was proxy for the local swimming hole, the preservation of which was really in service of the aquifer itself, we were protesting a particular multi-thousand acre resort and housing development, led by a locally-famous alumnus of that college football team, who controlled a huge minerals conglomerate that was involved in gold mining on another of the many islands of Indonesia, which relationship was damned for the abuses in East Timor ... I couldn't have pointed to these places on a map, and was unfamiliar with the connections being made in the local alt-weekly. But I see now that it did at least represent one of those moments that demonstrate, in retrospect, that the left was much more intelligent than it is now. At least it was concerned with real stuff.
(Apart from an ugly bridge, and some 90s houses that haven't aged well, style-wise, the golf course development was in truth not nearly so badly done as area sprawl developments would be, later on - but in part that was due to changes made in response to the protests. Not a few people live in a much nicer setting than they would otherwise, thanks to some old enviros.)
A Kissinger speech at the university was cancelled.
But I am certain that this little 1/3 of an island would not have drawn attention the way it did, if it had never been in Chomsky's anti-Kissinger crosshairs. And if Chomsky had not long ago established his unassailable Marxist "leanings".
I started to say that it's weird that both he and Kissinger are still alive but I see that Kissinger died.
T.C.'s own obsession with status, while I suppose clever (a dozen similar posts ago - uh-oh, there's going to be a demand for Proof by Google!) - to me represents a sort of dumbing down as well. Like, ah, I see, we're not to take seriously the idea that there is a real world of things to argue over. Or: somewhere, others do that. It's like he wants to drive people into the arms of populism.
Elites are those who reap great reward from the culturally dominant philosophy and social hierarchy.
Chomsky is a curious case because he never outright explains his values which, as a Christian, seem pretty familiar to me. Perhaps he feels that doing so might undermine his efforts, particularly in regards to his Jewish kin.
This also explains why Chomsky has not been beneficial to the contemporary elite class; Christian, or Christian-like, values are not in line with our elites' essentially physicalist worldview.
I think he’s just a case-by-case guy who doesn’t do in-group or out-group dynamics.
He probably just has an autistic obsessive approach to topics that interest him. If you asked him about monetary policy he wouldn’t give you a half-baked answer he would just say “I don’t know enough about it to give my opinion”. Much in the same way that Milton Friedman probably didn’t have much to say in East Timor.
Chomsky really is a role model of a pure intellectual and I don’t think his religion or ethnicity colours his views.
"My vague impression is that in the 2020s MIT seems to be displacing Harvard as the most influential university."
I wouldn't say that MIT is the most influential university, but the quickest to implement the anti-woke ideas developed in intellectual cultures outside of academia. Right is the New Left. The most dynamic new ideas aren't coming out of academia, but the tech industry + alt-Internet miasma. While MIT was the first university to ban diversity statements, they were really just following the lead of Brian Armstrong at Coinbase.
"I have to admit to having a soft spot for Dr. Chomsky because he’s unbelievably conscientious about answering emails from random nobodies."
How did your soft spot feel when Dr. C called for the unvaxxed to be forcefully separated from both society and their own heads? Almost Khmer Rougian, wouldn't you say?
Those who have the power to effectuate their demands.
"The Elites" might be a rhetorical term, but it's better than something a lot more abstract like "The United States", as in "The United States has decided to do something." In that case what has happened is that a few people, or maybe only one, has made a decision and has the power to effectuate it.
Regarding Chomsky, though I certainly approached his work eager to learn, I came away disappointed. One important reason was the fact that he unwittingly demonstrated that a theory of language can not be built up by linguistic units. Put bluntly, he ended up proving that what he set out to do couldn't be done, and he did it thinking he was doing something else.
The fact is he never had anything of lasting value to say about human behavior, which in the end is all there is, people doing things. And his Deep Structure turned out to be as empty as Freud's Unconscious, not some revelation with an underlying meaning, which was the claim of both, but simply a pair of explanations. And, not surprisingly, he has also never had anything to say about explanation itself, which is odd, considering the fact that he's essentially a professional explainer.
As far as his political commentary goes, I agree with Tom Wolfe who once said about Chomsky, in so many words, that he doesn't know any more than anyone else who reads the newspaper.
I read a book a few years ago called "Don't Sleep There Might Be Snakes" by Daniel Everett, in which a young American linguist/anthropologist lived with an Amazonian tribe. As a result of his experience there(and completely unlike Chomsky's theoretical approach) he developed a theory of language acquisition that challenged Chomsky.
Reportedly Chomsky sicced his acolytes onto this guy so as to destroy his career. Can't challenge Chomsky and prosper in his field apparently.
So, Chomsky has 1) cheered on the Khmer Rouge 2) called for the jailing of anti- vaxxers 3) destroys careers of those who disagree with him 4)reflexively adopts the leftist position on every political and moral issue.
"During the 1998 Asian economic crash, the Indonesian military regime fell and Australia stepped in to help East Timor become independent."
Side note to this is that in 99' East Timor was one of my first military deployments. The US held joint operations with Australia to contain the insurrection that was ongoing in East Timor at the time. Imagine seeing piles of bodies on fire, constantly hearing the gunfire, etc. As this was my first experience outside the confines of Western Civilization, this was shocking to witness.
Just another secret war we participated in that barely raised a blip on the radar.
This is certainly an interesting use of an interesting word. So often, "elite" is a straw man concept, a useful all-purpose explanation of political insurgencies. "Signor X presents himself as a populist champion battling faceless elites, though he himself is a member of the elite" (and seldom if ever is that how Signor X sees it himself).
Cowen's elite is a real group, the genuine intellectuals who do the glib op-ed writers' thinking for them. I would think Paul Krugman a good establishment example, John Mearsheimer a good dissident one. Chomsky much less so. He coined the phrase "manufacturing consent" and is one of the most insightful left wing critics of the Uniparty. But his best years as a linguist were over by the 1970s and his clash with Daniel Everett was just the last of many dirty fights in which the disciples mobilised to defend their sage. He is a political thinker who has got people thinking he is a genius for political purposes.
Robin DiAngelo, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Ibram X. Kendi can be explained using Rob Henderson's "Luxury Beliefs" thesis. But of course, Steve is now old enough that he is not really interested in new ideas but just likes playing the hits over and over.
“Old enough”?
I thought Steve was almost an official “oldster”.
He probably agrees with me that Connery was by far the best Bond.
Though Daniel Craig comes closest to rivaling him.
Oldies but goodies.
I was hoping that Steve would review Rob Henderson's book Troubled for the discussion on foster children. If nature dominates in life outcomes, then children raised in foster families would not be such outliers as explain in the book.
> "If nature dominates if life outcomes, then children raised in foster families would not be such outliers as explain in the book."
Aren't foster kids more likely to be spawned by un-nature-favored parents?
Parenting is vital, though the minimum necessary level is surprisingly low.
People can still be stunted.
Rob Henderson's life is an argument for nature > nurture. Also, this was an odd statement from the Amazon blurb: "He argues that stability at home is more important than external accomplishments, and he illustrates the ways the most privileged among us benefit from a set of social standards that actively harm the most vulnerable."
I'd be interested in knowing who he considers "most privileged" and how social standards benefit them "at the expense of the most vulnerable." It sounds like he's become well-versed in the narrative of people from stable, intact (i e. white bourgeois) families having a privilege that is unearned. And apparently this goes a step further: the standards are actively harmful to "the most vulnerable."
So not only is your white bourgeois privilege unearned but you actively harm others by mere espousal of social standards. Rob Henderson, of course, by virtue of his difficult upbringing, will stay out of the cannibal's pot.
The idea of luxury beliefs of the elite is almost all of the freshmen at Yale when Henderson was a freshman were from two parent families but those same students and their parents would never encourage the lower classes to get married and not have children until they are married.
That is among the great sins of the elite: they do not preach what they practice. If that is what Henderson says in the book good for him.
C. Wright Mill’s “The Power Elite” was officially part of the catechism back in the 60s. It made a big impression on me. I kept it for decades, moving it around the world in boxes, but I must have given it to a used book sale. We had a list in Manhattan of the officially elite called the social register, didn’t we?
I too have a soft spot for Chomsky. He is wrong about many things but he makes his arguments from pure conviction and seems to have little interest in status or material goods which is a good sign.
I used to scoff 20 years ago at his ideas about “manufacturing consent” but have thoroughly changed my mind. I’ve seen a few waves of awful ideas take hold over the years. And while there is no lizard-people conspiracy at work, a few people in a few institutions thinking the same way can do a lot to move the dial on public opinion.
I’m also nostalgic for the few remaining 20th century guys like Chomsky and Charles Murray who are scrupulously civilised in debate and never go ad hominem.
It could even be argued Curtis Yarvin copped his idea for the Cathedral from a combination of "Manufacturing Consent," and Burnham's "managerial class."
Moldbug acknowledged this frequently. His basic point was that Chomsky was better at manufacturing consent than the people Chomsky criticised.
Where? Do you have a link?
"the alcohol-wrecked minds of George W. Bush..."
Was his drinking problem that bad? Have there been any credible claims that he secretly resumed drinking while president?
Not that there was much of a mind there to wreck in the first place other than in narrow MBA type subjects.
I found Cowen's article to be quite bizarre. Where is his evidence that "elites" (a word I anyway refeuse to take seriously) have more or less prestige at one point in time than in another, still less that any individual has had any effect on this by performing more or less well in that role? It's a particularly odd subject for Sailer to pick up on as his own "noticing" output is so data-driven whereas Cowen seems to have none.
If one thinks about the early 1950's, it was easier to take "elites" seriously because almost all of them had served in World War II. However, the response of the elites of Vietnam really turned the average Americans against the elites across the political spectrum.
I saw no sign that Cowen was dating any discrediting of "elites" to the Vietnam war era.
I guess T.C. meant that Chomsky's provocations and especially "Manufacturing Consent" undermined the elites and made people sceptical of them. (The Halberstam book perhaps more so?) Certainly the book title alone became a catchphrase like "the medium is the message". But it kind of works in the other sense that he undermined elites by undermining himself, I agree an obvious member of the elite, by being obnoxious about the Khmer Rouge, or the "grassroots" nature of the Cultural Revolution.
But the post took me back to college years, when - how to put this as simply as possible - in service of a little salamander, which was proxy for the local swimming hole, the preservation of which was really in service of the aquifer itself, we were protesting a particular multi-thousand acre resort and housing development, led by a locally-famous alumnus of that college football team, who controlled a huge minerals conglomerate that was involved in gold mining on another of the many islands of Indonesia, which relationship was damned for the abuses in East Timor ... I couldn't have pointed to these places on a map, and was unfamiliar with the connections being made in the local alt-weekly. But I see now that it did at least represent one of those moments that demonstrate, in retrospect, that the left was much more intelligent than it is now. At least it was concerned with real stuff.
(Apart from an ugly bridge, and some 90s houses that haven't aged well, style-wise, the golf course development was in truth not nearly so badly done as area sprawl developments would be, later on - but in part that was due to changes made in response to the protests. Not a few people live in a much nicer setting than they would otherwise, thanks to some old enviros.)
A Kissinger speech at the university was cancelled.
But I am certain that this little 1/3 of an island would not have drawn attention the way it did, if it had never been in Chomsky's anti-Kissinger crosshairs. And if Chomsky had not long ago established his unassailable Marxist "leanings".
I started to say that it's weird that both he and Kissinger are still alive but I see that Kissinger died.
T.C.'s own obsession with status, while I suppose clever (a dozen similar posts ago - uh-oh, there's going to be a demand for Proof by Google!) - to me represents a sort of dumbing down as well. Like, ah, I see, we're not to take seriously the idea that there is a real world of things to argue over. Or: somewhere, others do that. It's like he wants to drive people into the arms of populism.
This is a great example of why Steve deserves to have the most important and largest syndicated column in America, and also why he won't.
Elites are those who reap great reward from the culturally dominant philosophy and social hierarchy.
Chomsky is a curious case because he never outright explains his values which, as a Christian, seem pretty familiar to me. Perhaps he feels that doing so might undermine his efforts, particularly in regards to his Jewish kin.
This also explains why Chomsky has not been beneficial to the contemporary elite class; Christian, or Christian-like, values are not in line with our elites' essentially physicalist worldview.
I think he’s just a case-by-case guy who doesn’t do in-group or out-group dynamics.
He probably just has an autistic obsessive approach to topics that interest him. If you asked him about monetary policy he wouldn’t give you a half-baked answer he would just say “I don’t know enough about it to give my opinion”. Much in the same way that Milton Friedman probably didn’t have much to say in East Timor.
Chomsky really is a role model of a pure intellectual and I don’t think his religion or ethnicity colours his views.
"My vague impression is that in the 2020s MIT seems to be displacing Harvard as the most influential university."
I wouldn't say that MIT is the most influential university, but the quickest to implement the anti-woke ideas developed in intellectual cultures outside of academia. Right is the New Left. The most dynamic new ideas aren't coming out of academia, but the tech industry + alt-Internet miasma. While MIT was the first university to ban diversity statements, they were really just following the lead of Brian Armstrong at Coinbase.
"I have to admit to having a soft spot for Dr. Chomsky because he’s unbelievably conscientious about answering emails from random nobodies."
How did your soft spot feel when Dr. C called for the unvaxxed to be forcefully separated from both society and their own heads? Almost Khmer Rougian, wouldn't you say?
"Who are "The Elites"?
Those who have the power to effectuate their demands.
"The Elites" might be a rhetorical term, but it's better than something a lot more abstract like "The United States", as in "The United States has decided to do something." In that case what has happened is that a few people, or maybe only one, has made a decision and has the power to effectuate it.
Regarding Chomsky, though I certainly approached his work eager to learn, I came away disappointed. One important reason was the fact that he unwittingly demonstrated that a theory of language can not be built up by linguistic units. Put bluntly, he ended up proving that what he set out to do couldn't be done, and he did it thinking he was doing something else.
The fact is he never had anything of lasting value to say about human behavior, which in the end is all there is, people doing things. And his Deep Structure turned out to be as empty as Freud's Unconscious, not some revelation with an underlying meaning, which was the claim of both, but simply a pair of explanations. And, not surprisingly, he has also never had anything to say about explanation itself, which is odd, considering the fact that he's essentially a professional explainer.
As far as his political commentary goes, I agree with Tom Wolfe who once said about Chomsky, in so many words, that he doesn't know any more than anyone else who reads the newspaper.
I read a book a few years ago called "Don't Sleep There Might Be Snakes" by Daniel Everett, in which a young American linguist/anthropologist lived with an Amazonian tribe. As a result of his experience there(and completely unlike Chomsky's theoretical approach) he developed a theory of language acquisition that challenged Chomsky.
Reportedly Chomsky sicced his acolytes onto this guy so as to destroy his career. Can't challenge Chomsky and prosper in his field apparently.
So, Chomsky has 1) cheered on the Khmer Rouge 2) called for the jailing of anti- vaxxers 3) destroys careers of those who disagree with him 4)reflexively adopts the leftist position on every political and moral issue.
For this people admire him?
And at least according to Peter Schweizer, he was on the DoD payroll...for years!
"During the 1998 Asian economic crash, the Indonesian military regime fell and Australia stepped in to help East Timor become independent."
Side note to this is that in 99' East Timor was one of my first military deployments. The US held joint operations with Australia to contain the insurrection that was ongoing in East Timor at the time. Imagine seeing piles of bodies on fire, constantly hearing the gunfire, etc. As this was my first experience outside the confines of Western Civilization, this was shocking to witness.
Just another secret war we participated in that barely raised a blip on the radar.
This is certainly an interesting use of an interesting word. So often, "elite" is a straw man concept, a useful all-purpose explanation of political insurgencies. "Signor X presents himself as a populist champion battling faceless elites, though he himself is a member of the elite" (and seldom if ever is that how Signor X sees it himself).
Cowen's elite is a real group, the genuine intellectuals who do the glib op-ed writers' thinking for them. I would think Paul Krugman a good establishment example, John Mearsheimer a good dissident one. Chomsky much less so. He coined the phrase "manufacturing consent" and is one of the most insightful left wing critics of the Uniparty. But his best years as a linguist were over by the 1970s and his clash with Daniel Everett was just the last of many dirty fights in which the disciples mobilised to defend their sage. He is a political thinker who has got people thinking he is a genius for political purposes.