Breathing Room
Okay, first, to be fair, let’s try to make a case for anti-‘elitism’. Let’s try to figure out if people who stake out claims to the anti-elitist moral high ground have any good reasons for such claims – let’s try to figure out if there is anything going on here besides one-upsmanship and a paradoxical (not to say ironic) kind of elitism via reverse-elitism. (It is kind of funny from that point of view. It can be seen as nothing but an endless silly regress. ‘You’re an elitist and I’m not, therefore I’m better so I’m in the elite and you’re not…um…wait…’) Let’s try to do the charitable reading thing, just this once.
The moral core of the idea seems to have to do with feelings of superiority. The thought is that people who like or profess to like (or who know something about or profess to know something about) certain cultural products – literature, art, classical music – as opposed to others – tv shows, movies, pop music – think they are better than people who don’t like or know about such products. That, in short, people who prefer or claim to prefer ‘Hamlet’ to ‘Titanic’ think they are better than people who prefer ‘Titanic’ to ‘Hamlet’.
There’s still some unpacking to do there, such as asking how the word ‘better’ is defined or used or meant in such a context, and then asking some (doubtless unanswerable but still pertinent) factual questions about whether people really do think they are ‘better’ in all possible senses of the word or only in a pretty narrow sense and whether that makes any difference and whether the whole thing isn’t drastically muddied and qualified and complicated by the possibly infinite other criteria for ‘better’ that could be relevant. That is, even if it is true that everyone who prefers ‘Hamlet’ to ‘Titanic’ thinks she is better than ‘Titanic’-preferrers in the sense of having better taste of a certain kind, does it follow that all Hamlet-preferrers think they are better in every possible way? What about ‘Titanic’-preferrers who are also brilliant astronomers or cooks or mountaineers or (as Mike said) plumbers? At least some people who like artifacts such as Hamlet have enough sense to know that there are many many criteria for what’s ‘better’ among humans and that no one is likely to be decisive.
And so on. But that’s a large subject, one we might go into another day, but for the moment let’s give the charitable reading room to breathe.
Okay, here’s the room to breathe. Sure – it’s true – preferences in the matter of literature, music and the like can prompt and foster feelings of superiority. Definitely. Thorstein Veblen made the point quite wittily a century ago, and people have gone on making it ever since. It’s a fair cop. I certainly had such feelings when I was a teenager, and possibly more recently. I may even have them still, although I do think they’re very attenuated if they exist at all, because I’m so sharply and permanently aware of all the things I don’t know – but then that’s a self-serving thing to think, so treat it with due caution.
But now – we’ve given the superiority-feelings room to breathe, so now what? What follows from that? That liking ‘Hamlet’ or the equivalent can lead to feelings of superiority therefore – what? No one should ever read ‘Hamlet’ again? Everyone should look around and figure out what is the most popular cultural artifact of the moment and then consume only that and nothing else lest feelings of superiority might be aroused? But then what would stop people deciding they had a more profound or refined or sophisticated or enlightened appreciation of the given cultural artifact? So – what? No one should read or listen to or look at anything ever lest feelings of superiority might be aroused? But then wouldn’t people just decide their appreciation of food or sex or breathing was in some way better than other people’s? So – what? People should blindfold themselves, wear ear-muffs, cut off their genitals? Or just jump off a cliff and have done with it?
Nope. This is a mug’s game, obviously. Or at least it’s obvious to me. Yes, things like a taste for literature can cause feelings of superiority and smugness, but then, so can just about anything else. Or not. People are very resourceful, and can find reasons to feel superior almost anywhere. That’s even a good thing in some ways – a source of ego-strength, motivation, energy, commitment, and the like. So we kind of have to live with it, don’t we. This one is smug because she is keen on Wordsworth, that one is smug because he can run a marathon in two hours and twenty minutes; she works hard at learning about medieval agriculture, he works hard at playing squash. R is thin and disdains fat people, Q is rich and disdains poor people, L is idealistic and disdains materialistic people, and so it goes.
Or at least so it always can go. It doesn’t absolutely have to, or it doesn’t absolutely have to loom large, I don’t think. Such feelings can be background feelings, there when needed for self-defense or a spur to energy, but otherwise shrunk very small and stuffed in a corner. It is possible for people to talk about subjects that happen to interest them, even if they are things that don’t interest most people, without preening or self-congratulation, merely because the subjects in fact interest them. Elitism wars can cause people to think dark thoughts about moving to a desert island or a mountaintop cabin or central Greenland and talking to seals or bats or palm trees but not human beings any more. Could be quite good fun, provided it’s a really superior bit of central Greenland, one that most people have never heard of.
Perhaps you can make more of a class-based argument for anti-elistism, a sort of historical contingency. For instance Oxford University is always moaning about people (e.g. the government) trying to get more non-private school people admitted. They moan that this is anti-elitism, a levelling down of standards, when in fact it is simply redressing a social wrong (which is why state school students actually do better than private school students when they are let in).
So what I’m trying to say is that it cuts both ways, people can use elitism as a cover for unjustified snobbishness, and this may have led in turn to a reaction against elitism, an impression that people are just hiding behind ‘excellence’ in order to carry on being privileged and snearing at those that haven’t had the opportunity to experience this excellence, or to appreciate it.
Or in some cases (well, one) neither stupid nor jealous, believe it or not – merely utterly wrong, and naughty with it.
But that’s a very good point about the postmodern gubbins (now there’s one of those words – don’t think I know that one) (I think I’ll start a club: the Quotidian Gubbins’ Society). I was thinking exactly that, while pondering the whole subject of how to interpret what looks like show-offy or pretentious behavior. I have to say, I certainly am deeply convinced that a great deal of High Theoretical jargon is there almost entirely for the purpose of some kind of showing off/exclusion. But how can I tell that? I can’t – it’s just how it strikes me. So if people decide to think I’m a pompous git because I mention one miserable Latin tag I happened to learn once just because I like it – well perhaps they’re merely doing what I do. (Only I don’t do it to friends because I don’t have any friends who talk postmodernist bollocks.)
Good point, PM. There is real elitism – genuine, physical, class-based, money and power-wielding – elitism. That’s one reason the war against the bogus kind is so irritating. Why pick on people who like to read when you could be picking on people who like to keep the proles out of Oxford? It’s the Bush thing again – he pretends to be anti-elitist when he is entirely a creation of unearned privilege. It’s maddening.
“Why pick on people who like to read when you could be picking on people who like to keep the proles out of Oxford?“
A good point — except that virtually nobody wants ‘to keep the proles out of Oxford’. What people on this side of the pond fear is a repeat performance of affirmative action, whether race or class-based.
It just happens that proles aren’t, on average, very bright, and they pass on their lack of brightness to their offspring, through a combination of nature and nurture.
Hence proles’ kids tend (on average) to be quite a lot dumber than non-proles’ kids. Hence, ceteris paribus, so few of them make it to high-quality universities.
So what? Stuff happens — life’s a bit of a bitch if you’re not smart and there’s very little can be done about it.
So what you’re saying is that black people aren’t, on average, very bright?
Semantic matter: What’s the difference between an elitist and a snob? Is there a difference? If so, what?
What if one truly considers Hamlet superior in every way (aesthetically, intellectually, etc.) to Titanic? Maybe Hamlet really IS better on all these levels. Is it elitism to think so? To say so? Or does it depend on HOW one says it? Or one’s motives for saying it (e.g., one-upmanship)?
Fuel for the fire: why is it that these particular qualifiers we have used to discuss ‘elitism’ are, well, hackneyed and so often grouped together? Liking Hamlet and classical music, working in a latin phrase? Is there not some truth to aping the true elite powers of the world when you ‘just happen’ to like all the same things that they stereotypically like (or what we seem to culturally agree are what they would)? What is the correlation between Hamlet snobs and Wine snobs?
Either there is ‘true’ taste provided by a liberal education, or there are quite a few who pretend and aspire to those very qualities because they themselves feel that the elite have those tastes.
I’m very glad you are back, OB. Your daily writings are anything but quotidian.
Yeah, I was planning to talk about the snob thing at some point. I don’t think there’s much difference – but there may be a little. Elitism seems to have more to do with intellectual matters, snobbery with social.
The trouble with the idea that ‘Hamlet’ really is better, my colleague keeps explaining to me, is that it can’t be grounded. I concede that, but keep insisting back that it can still be argued for in a provisional, local, relevant to this species only, sort of way. He thinks (if I understand him correctly) that the ungroundability is where the elitism comes in – that’s the gap it gets in by, so to speak. That ungroundable ideas of better and worse are sociological, because there’s not really anything else they can be. I don’t think that’s right, but I can’t give a knock-down argument for my thought. Stalemate.
Thanks, Mark! I’m glad I’m back too. I had huge fun but was getting twitchy to get back to the ol’ quotid.
I chose those examples partly because they are obvious (I wanted obvious ones for this particular argument) and partly because they featured in a recent, er, heated discussion I had on this subject – well ‘Hamlet’ didn’t but Shakespeare did, and Hamlet is quicker to type, plus I just happen to think it’s quite good.
“That ungroundable ideas of better and worse are sociological, because there’s not really anything else they can be.”
Ahh, the old hand-waving, ungroundable aesthetics dilemma again. You’re bound to bump against that sooner or later when you talk about elitism.
The trouble I have with statements like the quote above is that they are, themselves, unarguable in a very profound sense. A certain kind of aesthetic relativist will accept sociological reasons for explaining why person A likes, say, “Hamlet,” so they clearly do accept some kinds of logical causal factors for explaining tastes. Yet, they dismiss any other kinds of reasons out of hand. Following their own logic, I’d have to point out that there are perfectly good sociological reasons why some people (sociologists, say) would conclude that aesthetic tastes are nothing but cultural preferences. That’s not the same thing as being able to offer a good argument for the position. An alternate, and (to my mind) better view may acknowledge the role of cultural preferences while resisting the urge to conclude either that all aesthetic tastes are purely relative, or that aesthetic tastes can be absolutely grounded.
Aesthetic relativists can engage in a kind of elitism, too. They sometimes maintain that anyone who thinks there are arguable reasons for preferring one kind of art to another is deluded, while they alone understand the truth. To be fair, that doesn’t make their position false, either. But it should remind us that inflexible worshippers of art canons don’t have a monopoly on elitism, and the charge of elitism, in itself, can neither advance nor refute any theory of aesthetics.
Phil
Yeah, the old hand-waving dilemma again. We had a round of this a few months ago, didn’t we. It’s the Undead; it keeps coming back up.
“while they alone understand the truth”
I know – that’s the thing about ‘X is elitist and I’m anti-elitist so X’s tastes are elitist and mine are anti-elitist by definition because X is elitist and I’m anti-elitist’ that I mentioned yesterday. Fighting dirty, I call it – sometimes rather loudly and while thumping the table.
It occurs to me that Hare’s metaethical argument about why moral statements are not just grunts and moans, could be transplanted into the aesthetic sphere in some fashion.
i.e. If you can agree with another person about some specific qualities which make some art (or whatever) better than others, you can then have a rational debate about particular pieces of art (or whatever). If you really fundamentally don’t agree on what makes good art, you’ll never have a rational debate.
A compromise position? Or stating the obvious? I don’t know, I’m not at all familiar with this debate.
If it is a compromise position, it’s probably a very unsatisfactory compromise I’d imagine, to those that care strongly about which kinds of art are “better”.
“It just happens that proles aren’t, on average, very bright, and they pass on their lack of brightness to their offspring, through a combination of nature and nurture.”
It also just happens that non-proles aren’t, on average, very bright, etc. So what’s your point?
Brett,
My point is that intelligence in meritocratic societies like ours correlates closely with income and even more closely with social status: intelligent parents (on average) earn more than cognitively disadvantaged parents (‘proles’) and pass on their intelligence to their children (a) through their genes (nature) and (b) through their education (nurture).
Since proles’ children are more likely to be cognitively disadvantaged than non-proles’ children, they are less likely to ‘make it’ to good universities (as opposed to pseudoversities). That’s my point.
If you can find any factual errors or logical flaws in my argument, I’d be delighted if you would draw my attention to them.
Thanks in advance.
“It just happens that proles aren’t, on average, very bright, and they pass on their lack of brightness to their offspring, through a combination of nature and nurture. “
I’d agree with Brett on this one, it is people on average are not very bright. However, I am not sure that there is any diffence in the proportions of thickos accross class boundaries. Whilst I am not anti-capitalist (its probably the best of a bad bunch), I am not so fool as to think that the smart people make all the money (and hence can send their sprogs to better schools, and supply more resources), whilst the thickos become the deserving poor. Do you have any figures or studies to back up your assertion? Or is it something you just “feel” is right, because whenever one is doing well in life (e.g. not being a prole) it is nice and flattering to think we deserve it all, and it was no accident of birth that we have the nice life we have?
“My point is that intelligence in meritocratic societies like ours correlates closely with income and even more closely with social status:”
Really? We may be closer to a meritocracy than earlier and previous societies, but not very. I think you are being naive if you think that we are enough of a meritocarcy to be able to diagnose IQ from income. (Given how many of the “rich” now are pop-stars, sports-stars, and other cultural icons, I really don’t think the link between income and intellect is likely to very strong).
“intelligent parents (on average) earn more than cognitively disadvantaged parents (‘proles’)”
This is simple assertion, do you have anything apart from gut feeling to back this “fact” up?
“and pass on their intelligence to their children (a) through their genes (nature) and”
Now you really are on contentious ground. The role of nurture and nature in intelligence is far from clear.
“(b) through their education (nurture).”
“Since proles’ children are more likely to be cognitively disadvantaged than non-proles’ children,”
This seems to be confusing acheivement with ability. A prole’s child may not acheive as much as someone who has had every resource thrown at them; this does not reflect the relative abilities of the two. Nor does it guarantee that the prole will always stay behind when the playing field is level.
“If you can find any factual errors or logical flaws in my argument, I’d be delighted if you would draw my attention to them.”
They abound, but a few, listed above. We have better ways than income in gauging how smart someone is.
If Cathal IS right (a big ‘if’ IMHO) then surely it is even more urgent that we get more ‘prole’ children into good education so as to break the vicious circle?
Can anyone out there indentify when ‘elite’ became a boo-word? I don’t think it always has been.
And I join Mark in welcoming you back – any early news on how The Book is selling?
Brett, ChrisM:
On average aren’t people just averagely bright?
Cathal Copeland:
Logical flaw #1, you assume that better schools directly affect natural intelligence, rather than simply improving attainment in exams, which
#2 isn’t so; kids from lower socioeconomic groups do better at university than kids from higher socioeconomic groups for the same standard of pre-university attainment, suggesting the benefit of better schools is at least partially transient.
But fundamentally, the Oxford question is not about talent, or intelligence – it is about class, pure and simple – get many of the heads of Oxford colleges to speak candidly (and I have) and they just don’t think that the ‘proles’ fit in, not their sort of people. Private education and middle class parental involvement allow the dimmest of the middle classes to leap frog over the smartest of the proles. Meritocracy my arse.
“Do you have any figures or studies to back up your assertion?“
I’d suggest Hans Eysenck’s “A new look – intelligence” (see here) for starters, but there’s also lots of material in the net — try googling ‘class and intelligence’, for example.
The close correlation between social status and IQ is pretty uncontroversial, ekshelly, as opposed to the ‘race and IQ’ minefield, which I will circumnavigate.
“Or is it something you just “feel” is right, because whenever one is doing well in life (e.g. not being a prole) it is nice and flattering to think we deserve it all, and it was no accident of birth that we have the nice life we have?“
Well, like most relatively privileged people, I suppose I feel a bit guilty that life’s such a bitch for the cognitively disadvantaged and that life’s lottery is so unfair in general. And, yes, of course it was an ‘accident of birth’ that gave us the nice life. One’s genetic inheritance is as much an accident as one’s parents’ wealth. And when I see a tramp on the street I think: there, but for my genomes, go I.
Phew!
CC:
Logical flaw #3, although IQ (which is a proxy measure of intelligence, the validity of which is a whole area of dispute on its own) correlates with social class in adults, it is much less strong for children – i.e. intelligence could be considered to predict social mobility, but the socioeconomic class of a child may well not particularly predict their intelligence.
Logical flaw #4, tiny correlations (0.3 or less) have bugger all appreciable effect in the real world – yey we’ve accounted for 10% of variance!
PM writes:
“[Y]ou assume that better schools directly affect natural intelligence, rather than simply improving attainment in exams … ”
No, I don’t assume that – though I admit I didn’t explain my position very well. My apologies. Better schools probably have some minor positive effect on intelligence, but differential psychologists generally argue that genetic luck (and to some degree nutrition) is what really matters. In fact, I made precisely this point some weeks ago on the Adam Smith Blog , and I’ll reproduce it here:
“A modest solution might be to introduce IQ tests for university applicants and factor in the results into the overall weighting – i.e. to combine aptitude tests with achievement tests. The sad truth is that some state schools are so appalling that a high-IQ state school pupil may well end up with poorer exam results than a cognitively less well endowed private school pupil.
That is certainly the approach a private employer would apply when seeking to fill a vacancy, since it is not just a job applicant’s past achievement that matters, but also his potential. And potential is probably best determined via psychometric tests.
The same logic applies to higher education. It’s not just education, but also educability, that counts.”
Thanks for clarifying this point, PM. More later ….
Aptitude tests are not the same thing as IQ tests. You can practice for them for a start (obvously you can for IQ tests as well, but even more so in this case). The US SAT would be an aptitude test, or the new tests UK universities have brought in for Med/Dent/Vet degrees. However you are right that they probably fall somewhere between exams and IQ tests in terms of the benefit schools can give pupils.
My main points still stand though, esp. with regards to Oxford:
1. Perception of disrimination at application and once you get there (both true) which lead to less applications by even high attaining ‘normal’ students.
2. It is harder to get in, irrespective of attainment, for ‘normal’ students (various reasons for this, including higher predicted grades by schools and discrimination by interviewers).
3. Those with a worse educational and social background actually do better than those with better educational and social backgrounds (at least for Oxford and a red brick I can’t remember, think it may have been Bristol).
So the evidence, regardless of gumpf about IQ and genetics, suggests that the proles are discouraged from applying and discriminated against when compared to toffs of similar attainment, and actually better than those toffs for the same level of exam attainment. Pretty sound reasons for affirmative action methinks!
PM, continued:
“But fundamentally, the Oxford question is not about talent, or intelligence – it is about class, pure and simple – get many of the heads of Oxford colleges to speak candidly (and I have) and they just don’t think that the ‘proles’ fit in, not their sort of people. Private education and middle class parental involvement allow the dimmest of the middle classes to leapfrog over the smartest of the proles. Meritocracy my arse.”
This is almost certainly an exaggeration. However, class may still be a factor, even in this meritocratic day and age. Interestingly, Hans Eysenck raised a similar point some 30 years ago in his classic ‘The Inequality of Man’, comparing the German Democratic Republic’s policy of setting university entrance quotas for children of working-class origin to the Oxbridge policy (at the time) of factoring in the applicant’s ‘received pronunciation’ (I quote from memory). Both policies, he rightly argued, were unfair. Class-based selection, just like selection based on gender or race, is incompatible with meritocratic values.
PM, the world has changed in the past 30 years. Don’t damage a sound case by making exaggerated claims. My own impression (and that’s all it is) is that good universities are bending over backwards to find gifted pupils from lower-class or minority backgrounds. The sad truth is that they are very few in number.
Incidentally, please try to distinguish between a ‘logical flaw’ and an ‘empirical error’.
[Brief insertion]
Thanks Chris.
Word on how the book is selling is – err – slowly! Maybe it will pick up when, um, the wind changes.
PM, yet again:
“Pretty sound reasons for affirmative action methinks!“
If by AA you mean quotas or ‘targets’ in favour of lower-class children as opposed to middle-class ones, or in favour of dull girls as opposed to smart boys, or in favour of blacks as opposed to Whites, Jews, or Indians — bullshit.
If by AA you mean the introduction of aptitude / IQ tests and the elimination of personal interviews — count me in.
When an argument depends on p, and it happens that ¬p is that not a logical flaw -and- an empirical error? – this isn’t a mathematical logic class ;-)
“My own impression (and that’s all it is) is that good universities are bending over backwards to find gifted pupils from lower-class or minority backgrounds. The sad truth is that they are very few in number.”
I don’t believe that either of those claims are true. I do believe that good universities are making some attempts to encourage good pupils from lower-class or minority backgrounds, but they could still do much more. Your second claim is false and insulting, my post of 14:40 (annoying that they aren’t numbered) presents some reasons to think that there are plenty of gifted lower-class people out there just waiting to be admitted.
“My own impression (and that’s all it is) is that good universities are bending over backwards to find gifted pupils from lower-class or minority backgrounds. The sad truth is that they are very few in number.”
Are there not shed loads of high achieving pupils from minority backgrounds (thinking Asian ones here)?
“On average aren’t people just averagely bright?”
Yes they are, its just that “averagely bright” is “not very bright”. ;-).
“Are there not shed loads of high achieving pupils from minority backgrounds (thinking Asian ones here)?
“
Sorry, I used ‘minority’ euphemistically. Nice people like me often say ‘minority’ when we really mean ‘under-represented minority’ (such as, in the US, blacks and Hispanics).
Some minorities (in the non-euphemistic sense) are of course ‘over-represented’ in academia — Asians and Jews, for example. I presume that the chief reason for this is that they are, on average, smarter than Caucasians.
What do you think, PM?
‘fraid I’m gonna go all socio-economic on you CC, for instance, are Asians genetically programmed to become doctors and dentists?
Jewish “over-representation” in academia is of such recent vintage–we’re talking about the last thirty years or so–that I’m not sure how one could possibly derive anything meaningful from it. It’s not as though we were all stupid before 1970. (Decent overview here.)
CC, I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic.
[quick note, being British, by ‘Asian’, I mean ‘ethnically from the Indian subcontinent’]
My point was more that social encouragement from families could lead to higher achievement in these groups (which I presume to be the reason why Asian people are so likely to go for ‘professional’ careers in law and medicine). This, as well as a higher economic status, was my implied reason for higher achievement for these groups. As a counter example to your genetic account, might I present the very poor showing of people of bangladeshi extraction when compared to Indian and Pakistani – biologically indistinguishable, and even share the same religion with Pakistanis.
CC, here’s a thought…by your reasoning wouldn’t the Flynn effect be forcing older people down the economic groups, to be replaced by dynamic youngsters?
“My point was more that social encouragement from families could lead to higher achievement in these groups … “
Nobody denies that. Ceteris paribus (that’s Latin for ‘other things being equal’) kids whose parents pressurise them into studying 80 hours a week will have more success than kids whose parents couldn’t care less, allow them to watch MTV and listen to moron music, etc. Unless they commit suicide, that is.
However, adoption studies and studies comparing monozygotic and dizygotic twins clearly demonstrate that ‘nurture’ on its own isn’t enough, and that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
I’ve no idea as to why Bangladeshis are relative ‘losers’. Interesting question, though. I recommend consulting Razib’s fantastic website Gene Expression — perhaps you’ll find something there, Razib being a very smart Pakistani and one of the blogosphere’s leading experts on IQ issues.
As to the mysterious Flynn effect (the increase in secular IQ over time), as far as I know it bears no relation to the phenomenon of IQ and ageing, but perhaps I’m mistaken. In fact, for certain jobs that require high mathematical IQ, guys tend to burn out in their 30s. They ARE then replaced by dynamic youngsters.
Being in my fifties, I’m pretty glad I’m a linguist ….
CC, I think you’re running lots of different ideas together. I don’t deny that IQ seems to have high heritability, I do deny that rich kids get into good universities because they’re genetically more intelligent than poor kids. And I gave some examples of the kinds of reasons that lead me to believe that.
As an analogy, we know that schizophrenia is highly heritable, we know that African-Americans and British Afro-Caribbeans have ludicrously higher rates of schizophrenia. So you might say, ‘a hah, therefore black people are genetically predisposed towards schizophrenia’ – however you would be wrong, because people in the West Indies don’t have this elevated rate i.e. just because something is highly heritable, doesn’t mean that a difference you have observed is actually due to genetic differences.
As to the Flynn effect, is it not a cohort effect and exactly to do with ageing? Older people always have lower IQs anyway, that’s why we normalise to age, but this is on top of that.
My experience of proles at Oxford is that they were scarily bright: yr average prole was far brighter than yr average rich kid. In fact, there was an approximate inverse correlation between quality of education and innate intelligence.
Of course, the odd scary bright toff, with 14 years of expensive good eduation, was at the top of the tree.
Remember – ignorance we can fix, stupidity is permanent, but most of the skills and self-confidence that are also necessary for academic advancement can be learned. Schools for bright toffs are good at this. Schools for proles less so. Many schools are in between.
Anyway, what the hell do I know? I work a university that lets _absolutely everyone_ in, regardless of academic record. Seems to work, in its way.