Bork Bork Bork!

[elfs]

Sometimes, threads assemble by pure synchronicity.



fallenpegasus pointed some of us today to the article on Slashdot called Why Nerds Are Unpopular, and one paragraph pointedly caught my eye (ow, that's more painful than I meant it to sound!). Graham wrote:

I think the important thing about the real world is not that it's populated by adults, but that it's very large, and the things you do have real effects. That's what school, prison, and ladies-who-lunch all lack. The inhabitants of all those worlds are trapped in little bubbles where nothing they do can have more than a local effect. Naturally these societies degenerate into savagery. They have no function for their form to follow.

Robert Bork, whom I shall never forgive for his frontal attack on Griswold v. Roe nor for his ongoing attack on individual liberties, nonetheless has an exceptionally powerful insight into modern liberal thought when he states:

Modern liberalism grew out of classical liberalism by expanding its central ideals-- liberty and equality... [Today], "equality" has become radical egalitarianism (the equality of outcomes rather than of opportunities), and "liberty" takes the form of radical individualism (a refusal to admit limits to the gratifications of the self).

Individualism and egalitarianism may seem an odd pair, since liberty in any degree produces inequality, while equality of outcomes requires coercion that destroys liberty. If they are to operate simultaneously, radical egalitarianism and radical individualism, where they do not complement one another, must operate in different areas of life, and that is precisely what we see in today's culture. Radical egalitarianism advances, on the one hand, in areas of life and society where superior achievement is possible and would be rewarded but for coerced equality. Radical individualism, on the other hand, is demanded when there is no danger that achievement will produce inequality and people wish to be unhindered in the pursuit of pleasure. This finds expression particularly in the areas of sexuality and violence, and their vicarious enjoyment in popular entertainment.

While usually I could care less about the "conservative vs. liberal" argument-- both components of which are dangerous because both are simply Statics with different agendas-- Bork is essentially correct here about the radical egalitarianism that seems to grip more and more of our academic instutions.

(On the other hand, it's a laugh riot when Limbaugh whines about Ritalin, one of the few drugs that, used responsibly, actually gives merit-worthy but clinically hyperactive kids a chance to succeed against the school system he hates so much.)

So let me go out on my limb here and say that Graham is saying essentially the same thing: a system that refuses to acknowledge that there are winners and losers, one that traps everyone into "bubbles where nothing they do can have more than a local effect," is going to produce a people of nothing but savagery.

Comments

What we'll do with ours...

[omahas.livejournal.com]

I know I was a crappy student.

And look how Elf turned out ;)

Actually, I am of the opinion that one of the biggest problems with the school system that we have is rooted in the loss of civic responsibility. In other words, parents send their kids to school on the assumption that school will raise them. Their job, apparently, is done.

Now, I know that not all parents actually have this opinion, but many really do, consciously or not. Their kids come home, they do their homework, and their parents rarely intervene. Sometimes it's because their parents don't care. Sometimes it's because they don't know how to deal with their kids education or are afraid to do so. Sometimes it's because they look at their kids homework and go "huh?". They've either forgotten how it was supposed to be done, or never got that far in the first place. Imagine these parents telling their kids "Uh, I have no idea. I never got that far/don't remember this." Translation to their kids (they think, whether it's true or not): "I'm too stupid/I'm dumber than you." Most parents don't want to say something like that.

I'm of the opinion that parents have equal responsibility to educate their children as the school system does, but more so in those areas that the school system shouldn't be educating their kids on in the first place. That would be civic responsibility, ethics, our specific culture (as well as the cultural heritage that they may have come from), etiquete, etc. There's nothing wrong with parents helping out with other kinds of homework, and I encourage parents to do so. But they need to be involved in some way with their kids' education.