4 ms·

This just the masses realising that they have been decapitated. In all western countries the intelligent are identified at a young age and brought into the ruli

This just the masses realising that they have been decapitated. In all western countries the intelligent are identified at a young age and brought into the ruling class via education. There is no one left to speak for the interests of the bottom 90% nor formulate a plan to change the status quo. Faced with this it is not surprising that the masses get restless and thrash out at any symbol of authority no matter the consequences to themselves.

pilsetnieks 10y ago
So you're saying that the masses are dumb, and the ruling elites are smart?
- DavidHm 10y ago
  I think that is what he is saying. Though he is saying that the ruling elites are ruling because they are smart, and not that the ruling elites are smart because they are ruling.
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    Exactly. If you left the ruling elite to breed amoungst themselves you would end up with something like the Russian nobility - idiotic and doomed.
  - Noseshine 10y ago
    It's a circular definition though - it's not falsifiable, because if they are in power they must be smart, defining smart as "ability to get into power", if they can't get power evidently they are not smart enough... Not very useful, except if you enjoy making "winning" arguments that you can't lose.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Yes. They know they have been conned, but they don't know how to fight the elites. They are strong, but leaderless and so are left with only the Sampson option.
- narrator 10y ago
  It's not so much that the masses are dumb, but that propaganda techniques have been so refined and optimized that people have no idea who or what they have to fight to get what they want. There are a lot of ideological systems that are created simply to misdirect the public's attention away from actual important issues and toward infighting or intellectual dead ends or towards the goals of the propagandists. Let me give you one example: the murder rate in the US is the lowest its been since 1963. The way the media directs the public's attention and magnifies the coverage of the violence that does happen makes the public think that there's a huge terrorism, crime and gun violence crisis. Anyone who wants to actually figure out what is going on just needs to look at the numerical data, but that's boring. Instead political life is a bunch of people reposting whatever article got published today to freak the public out or very narrowly guide them into strengthening their belief in a particular ideological narrative. People aren't stupid, but given limited information they are easily influenced.
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    This is because the elites have all the big artillery. It is not the hereditary nobility that are providing the brains behind all this propaganda. The masses know they are losing, they just don't have the leaders able to fight the ruling class and so are blindly lashing out at all authority - the current situation is rather like the Great Rising [1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt
  - jolux 10y ago
    >Let me give you one example: the murder rate in the US is the lowest its been since 1963. The way the media directs the publics attention and magnifies the coverage of the violence that does happen makes the public think that there's a huge terrorism, crime and gun violence crisis. Yep, this is true. However mass shootings over the same period of time have been going up. Compared to the rest of the industrialized western world, we do have a gun violence crisis. Considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r..., the US is sitting between Uruguay and Montenegro with a rate of 10.54 per 100,000. Whether or not it's been falling since 1963 (and I know it has been) it's still at an appalling place and we deserve better. Not to privilege the West over everywhere else but we are closer to most other so-called "Western countries" culturally speaking than countries that are not traditionally part of the West. Within that framework, Finland has the next-highest rate, and it's at 3.25 per 100,000 (i.e. about three times less).
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > This is part of a larger divide that has been opening up between “mass populations” and “informed publics” (Edelman defined the latter group as those who have a college degree, regularly consume news media, and are in the top 25 percent of household income for their age group in a given country) By Edelman's definition, it would appear his elites are more fit to govern than the masses (again, by his definition). That doesn't mean the latter are ignored. But if you put every issue to a vote, the people who have experienced less worldly exposure, less challenge in critical thinking, who are not consuming information from outside their narrow social circles and are not economically tied into the whole will always win. If you're a fan of good long-term decision making, that's a lousy prospect.
cm3 10y ago
I find that hard to believe. Those in power, which you classify as (more) intelligent, were afraid of their peer Yanis Varoufakis so much that they did everything to make him leave. They didn't understand his proposals (models) because the other finance ministers missed vital economic knowledge, or that's how it seems to me at least. If I looked for it, I could name many not-so-intelligent and uneducated ministers all around the world. We can start by naming plagiarized PhDs in Germany, including (ironically) one education minister. However, if by 'ruling class' you don't necessarily mean the government, then maybe you're right. If that's what you're saying, then the government would be ruled by the economy which would be controlled by those who were put on such a track at a young age.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  I am not suggesting that all of the ruling class are intelligent, but that almost none of the masses are these days. Anyone born into the masses with the talent and brains to challenge the rulers is brought into the ruling class via education.
- ajnin 10y ago
  They were afraid of Varoufakis because he wanted to change the economic model of the EU. He wanted to change the status quo, which their job is to protect. You say they were "not-so-intelligent an uneducated", I say they did their job well and were pretty good at manipulating public opinion.
  - tremon 10y ago
    As I understood, he wanted to change the economic model of Greece only. It's the EU that didn't want economic pluriformity.
adrianN 10y ago
I'm university educated, where do I get my ruling class membership card? I'd like to change a few things.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  If only education equaled intelligence. The intelligent might all be educated, but the educated are certainly not all intelligent :)

pilsetnieks 10y ago

So you're saying that the masses are dumb, and the ruling elites are smart?

DavidHm 10y ago
I think that is what he is saying. Though he is saying that the ruling elites are ruling because they are smart, and not that the ruling elites are smart because they are ruling.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Exactly. If you left the ruling elite to breed amoungst themselves you would end up with something like the Russian nobility - idiotic and doomed.
- Noseshine 10y ago
  It's a circular definition though - it's not falsifiable, because if they are in power they must be smart, defining smart as "ability to get into power", if they can't get power evidently they are not smart enough... Not very useful, except if you enjoy making "winning" arguments that you can't lose.
danieltillett 10y ago
Yes. They know they have been conned, but they don't know how to fight the elites. They are strong, but leaderless and so are left with only the Sampson option.
narrator 10y ago
It's not so much that the masses are dumb, but that propaganda techniques have been so refined and optimized that people have no idea who or what they have to fight to get what they want. There are a lot of ideological systems that are created simply to misdirect the public's attention away from actual important issues and toward infighting or intellectual dead ends or towards the goals of the propagandists. Let me give you one example: the murder rate in the US is the lowest its been since 1963. The way the media directs the public's attention and magnifies the coverage of the violence that does happen makes the public think that there's a huge terrorism, crime and gun violence crisis. Anyone who wants to actually figure out what is going on just needs to look at the numerical data, but that's boring. Instead political life is a bunch of people reposting whatever article got published today to freak the public out or very narrowly guide them into strengthening their belief in a particular ideological narrative. People aren't stupid, but given limited information they are easily influenced.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  This is because the elites have all the big artillery. It is not the hereditary nobility that are providing the brains behind all this propaganda. The masses know they are losing, they just don't have the leaders able to fight the ruling class and so are blindly lashing out at all authority - the current situation is rather like the Great Rising [1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt
- jolux 10y ago
  >Let me give you one example: the murder rate in the US is the lowest its been since 1963. The way the media directs the publics attention and magnifies the coverage of the violence that does happen makes the public think that there's a huge terrorism, crime and gun violence crisis. Yep, this is true. However mass shootings over the same period of time have been going up. Compared to the rest of the industrialized western world, we do have a gun violence crisis. Considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r..., the US is sitting between Uruguay and Montenegro with a rate of 10.54 per 100,000. Whether or not it's been falling since 1963 (and I know it has been) it's still at an appalling place and we deserve better. Not to privilege the West over everywhere else but we are closer to most other so-called "Western countries" culturally speaking than countries that are not traditionally part of the West. Within that framework, Finland has the next-highest rate, and it's at 3.25 per 100,000 (i.e. about three times less).
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> This is part of a larger divide that has been opening up between “mass populations” and “informed publics” (Edelman defined the latter group as those who have a college degree, regularly consume news media, and are in the top 25 percent of household income for their age group in a given country) By Edelman's definition, it would appear his elites are more fit to govern than the masses (again, by his definition). That doesn't mean the latter are ignored. But if you put every issue to a vote, the people who have experienced less worldly exposure, less challenge in critical thinking, who are not consuming information from outside their narrow social circles and are not economically tied into the whole will always win. If you're a fan of good long-term decision making, that's a lousy prospect.

cm3 10y ago

I find that hard to believe. Those in power, which you classify as (more) intelligent, were afraid of their peer Yanis Varoufakis so much that they did everything to make him leave. They didn't understand his proposals (models) because the other finance ministers missed vital economic knowledge, or that's how it seems to me at least. If I looked for it, I could name many not-so-intelligent and uneducated ministers all around the world. We can start by naming plagiarized PhDs in Germany, including (ironically) one education minister. However, if by 'ruling class' you don't necessarily mean the government, then maybe you're right. If that's what you're saying, then the government would be ruled by the economy which would be controlled by those who were put on such a track at a young age.

danieltillett 10y ago
I am not suggesting that all of the ruling class are intelligent, but that almost none of the masses are these days. Anyone born into the masses with the talent and brains to challenge the rulers is brought into the ruling class via education.
ajnin 10y ago
They were afraid of Varoufakis because he wanted to change the economic model of the EU. He wanted to change the status quo, which their job is to protect. You say they were "not-so-intelligent an uneducated", I say they did their job well and were pretty good at manipulating public opinion.
- tremon 10y ago
  As I understood, he wanted to change the economic model of Greece only. It's the EU that didn't want economic pluriformity.

adrianN 10y ago

I'm university educated, where do I get my ruling class membership card? I'd like to change a few things.

danieltillett 10y ago
If only education equaled intelligence. The intelligent might all be educated, but the educated are certainly not all intelligent :)