[Craic] David Brooks in The Atlantic

[David Walsh]

Al – thanks for the heads-up. It is an interesting read. Here are a few quotes from the article.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/09/blame-the-bobos-creative-class/619492/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

“In 2020, Joe Biden won just 500 or so counties—but together they account for 71 percent of American economic activity, according to the Brookings Institution<https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/11/09/biden-voting-counties-equal-70-of-americas-economy-what-does-this-mean-for-the-nations-political-economic-divide/>. Donald Trump won more than 2,500 counties that together generate only 29 percent of that activity. An analysis by Brookings and The Wall Street Journal<https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/09/10/america-has-two-economies-and-theyre-diverging-fast/> found that just 13 years ago, Democratic and Republican areas were at near parity on prosperity and income measures. Now they are divergent and getting more so. If Republicans and Democrats talk as though they are living in different realities, it’s because they are.

In study<https://www.rips-irsp.com/articles/10.5334/irsp.285/> after study<https://hbr.org/2017/05/research-how-you-feel-about-individualism-is-influenced-by-your-social-class>, members of our class display more individualistic values, and a more autonomous sense of self, than other classes. Members of the creative class see their career as the defining feature of their identity, and place a high value on intelligence. Usage of the word smart increased fourfold in The New York Times from 1980 to 2000, according to Michael Sandel’s recent book, The Tyranny of Merit<https://bookshop.org/a/12476/9780374289980>—and by 2018 usage had nearly doubled again.

According to the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, 65 percent of Americans believe<https://s3.amazonaws.com/iasc-prod/uploads/pdf/sapch.pdf#page=30> that “the most educated and successful people in America are more interested in serving themselves than in serving the common good.

The modern meritocracy is a resentment-generating machine. But even leaving that aside, as a sorting device, it is batshit crazy. The ability to perform academic tasks during adolescence is nice to have, but organizing your society around it is absurd. That ability is not as important as the ability to work in teams; to sacrifice for the common good; to be honest, kind, and trustworthy; to be creative and self-motivated. A sensible society would reward such traits by conferring status on them. A sensible society would not celebrate the skills of a corporate consultant while slighting the skills of a home nurse. Read: The false promise of meritocracy<https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/12/meritocracy/418074/>

Some 60 years after its birth, the meritocracy seems more and more morally vacuous. Does the ability to take tests when you’re young make you a better person than others? Does a society built on that ability become more just and caring?

This situation produces a world in which the populist right can afford to be intellectually bankrupt. Right-leaning parties don’t need to have a policy agenda. They just need to stoke and harvest the resentment toward the creative class. Blind to our own power, we have created enormous inequalities—financial inequalities and more painful inequalities of respect. The task before us is to dismantle the system that raised us.”
David


From: craic <craic-bounces at lists.integralshift.ca> On Behalf Of Allan Baker via craic
Sent: August 24, 2021 3:30 PM
To: Assisting virtual Craic <craic at lists.integralshift.ca>
Cc: Allan Baker <allan.baker7878 at gmail.com>
Subject: [Craic] David Brooks in The Atlantic

Friends;

There’s an article worth reading in The Atlantic magazine this month.

David Brooks writes about “the Creative Class”, and Richard Florida will be angry when he reads this article. Brooks, for his part, admits his mistakes in the article. A good read.
Catch it on-line at:  The creative class was supposed to foster progressive values and economic growth. Instead we got resentment, alienation, and endless political dysfunction. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/09/blame-the-bobos-creative-class/619492/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Stay hopeful;
Allan
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