What's wrong with elitism? It seems to me that elitism is simply the statement that some people are better than others. Now, surely we take some people to be better than others on a relative level; person A is stronger than person B, B is more knowledgable with regard to medicine than A, and so on. And some ends we consider to be more important than others: it doesn't matter whether Charles Manson was really a great artist, he is still inferior as a human being to Gandhi. And if I had to choose between these two whose life was more valuable, I would not hesitate in my choice, so it seems odd to me to say that all humans have been created equal in value. For those who may bring God into the picture, saying that God holds everyone equal, I will point to those whom God has completely separated from all means of salvation as well as basic human needs; you may as well convince me of square Euclidean circles than that God loves people equally, perhaps barring some form of universalism. So I do not understand why we reject out of hand the idea that some people are simply better, other than from a misplaced democratic affection which wills that since we want everyone to be equal, they all are already.*
Now, I am not saying that this is the happiest situation, that we should embrace the fact that there is a human elite and rejoice in it. Feel free to wish that all people were equal, and work to make this true. Just do not mistake it for a present reality.
But that brings up a problem. Formerly, we would wish for the elite to have a prodominent voice in society, whether they be philosopher-kings, aristocratic gentlemen, academics, or whatnot. In turn, we have had similar situations in terms of cultures; culture A sees itself as superior to culture B, and proceeds to colonize. That has yet to work out. It seems to me that there are two fundamental problems. First, we don't know exactly who the elite are. In a society run by culture or education, others outside of power structures have been known to poke fun at those in charge, at their emptiness and book-knowledge. And how does one cull the best people for an aristocracy without lapsing into oligarchy? Concerning intercultural relations, we are still trying to get down the basics of understanding each others' cultures; how can we judge between them? What values are truly important, and who instantiates them? How do we avoid simply picking random differences and playing them as trumps, such as skin-color?
Second, even if we were to properly pick out the elite in the given situation, would they be elite enough? We can think of siblings playing, where the older sibling convinces the younger to do something really stupid. The older sibling most likely is truly more experienced, intelligent, etc. than the younger, but just enough so to get them in trouble. So just because one group is better than another, this does not automatically mean that the better group can legitimately lead the worse, let alone force their decisions.
So we appear to be stuck with an imperfect elite. If it were elite enough and recognizable enough, it could run things and this would be best for society. If there were no elite, then everyone could participate in everything equally in a true democracy. As things stand, there are many who really should be silent, but they should not be silenced. Not all voices are equal, but no one is meet to judge among them. To let everyone have a say leads to carnivals on urgent issues like health care, to fully blameworthy behavior on the part of truly ignorant oafs, but is this worse than Mao or Stalin? Is there a solution, other than doing our best to educate people that by default they should shut up on political matters until they have a worthwhile, studied opinion?
What would such a studied opinion be? There is a difference between opining that one is jobless (a claim I'd most likely accept), that one's community is mostly jobless (a claim I'd accept pending a search into how well this one represents her community), and that one knows how to solve the job situation (a claim at which I'd most likely be skeptical for most people having the problem, and at least without some significant insight into general structures of society). Everyone can attain the first, of their own personal experiences. Those of practical wisdom along with community involvement can attain the second. The third is for those with a more theoretical background. Both the second and third need the voices of the first for their data, but that is where the first ends; those who do not learn anything beyond their own situation have no right to politics. The voices of practical and of theoretical reason, in turn, never reduce to each other, since the practical person will does not, as practical, understand the broader relations outside of her context, and the theoretical person, as theoretical, does not know the lived, material conditions.
* What if even saying that all people are of equal value is misleading, since there simply is no relation of measurement between people at all? What if people are to be accepted, not compared? I'm thinking mainly along more Daoist or Zen lines here, in particular, that our judgements of good and bad have created the problem. I'll have to think more on this one, but it does at least go against my basic suspicions (which come with no guarantee of truth); if nothing else, politics seems to me about relative problems of managing groups of people, and relative problems create relative standards of judgement applicable within the sphere of the problem.
2 comments:
Maybe we should talk more about this this evening.
I would venture that persons are equal in their moral value. Not in the sense of moral virtue -- one person may be more virtuous than another. More in the sense of what persons deserve, or how they ought to be regarded / treated by others.
I accept that people are differently situated, and that some situations are better than others (epistemically, with respect to various virtues--not just moral ones, with respect to quality of life, etc.)
And even dessert is relative, since what is good for a person is relative to their situation to a significant extent.
I think what I would reject is the kind of inequality that would seem to justify special pleading in moral reasoning. My wellbeing may be differently constituted than another's, but it is false that one of us is more deserving of our wellbeing's being actualized.
This need work, obviously, as a sophisticated position.
Since I still need to get a new phone, I'll post my thoughts here in the meantime.
It seems that saying that people differ in moral worth would be to say the following: we can hierarchically rank people according to moral considerations in assigning well-being to them. Moral considerations may be intrinsic to the person, or may be what makes them more adept at contributing to social living, or may be something else.
From this, there can be an absolute and a relative ordering. An absolute ordering would say that we need to give those lower on the scale less, because it would be unjust to do otherwise. I think that we both disagree with this method.
A relative ordering could admit that, in the case of infinite resources, everyone could be treating according to individual needs (which may require some rough treatment for those who are vicious, but it would still be for their own ultimate benefit). However, once resources become insufficient, we can take into account moral considerations. Since they can be ranked at all according to moral worth to receive well-being, they are not morally equal.
Let's say that we are commissioned to build an ark which can carry 1000 people. We have to choose who goes on there. It seems to me that after we account for other concerns extrinisic to moral worth (whom we can get a hold of most quickly, our own attachments to family and friends, who would be most useful to have on an ark), we would not necessarily have determined all of those who should be on the ark. If all people were morally equal, we would have to roll a die or something, since there would be no difference in worth in the people themselves. But I at least would choose the virtuous person over the vicious.
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