Much has been said in the past decade about the “elite”—those with significant wealth, power, influence, and education (or, rather, the reputation garnered from attending specific schools, regardless of education actually attained)—and little of it positive. In our culture of political polarization and populism, to be “elite” is to be painted with two black marks: first, and principally, societal “privilege” (i.e., status unearned); second, being “out of touch” with the real living struggles of the common person. We hear also about the “laptop class”, a kind of bourgeoise of the information age. But while we might rail against the “elite”, do we really understand why they exist?
Technocracy and Technology
Every age has its elite. Natural talent results in authority and respect proportionate to that talent’s employment. This distribution, of course, is not always just. Professional athletes, undoubtedly, are far superior in their skills to average persons. But they receive disproportionate salaries: we should not pay so much to anyone for entertainment. So too, one could say, of CEOs, CTOs, and executives of every kind, for whom the key skill seems often a disregard of the morally righteous in favor of the profitable.
Undoubtedly, kings and lords and clergy have, in centuries past, likewise received disproportionate compensation. However, the elite of today are often afforded a protection not so readily found in bygone eras: namely, bureaucracy. Look around today at corporations violating laws, regulations—that skirt taxes, find loopholes to allow generally immoral behavior. Who is held accountable? Far fewer persons than actually responsible. Why?
We have all observed individuals occupying situations in life for which neither their character nor their intellect qualified them, and so placed only through nominal education, or birth or consanguinity.
T.S. Eliot 1949: Notes Toward a Definition of Culture
In a word: technocracy. We are ruled by experts: and never just one expert. Guidelines and mandates are the issuance of an individual only when he or she wishes to receive credit. If a failure, if unpopular, always it was the product of a team of experts. Why do we have so many experts in the first place?
In another word: technology. As we develop devices and methods that enable more and more precise control and manipulation of the world in which we live, the more expertise seems required to exercise this instrumental agency. Today, it is not only the case that everything we touch feels the influence of technology, but that the technological hand we use is connected to all the other technology, too. (Such is the effect of the digital network.)
A technological technocracy (or “technopoly”, to use Neil Postman’s term) has resulted in a very inhuman, incompetent form of governance.
Subsidiarity and Wisdom
But are we doomed to this technocratic incompetence? The technological perfusion of our lives today seems even more complete than in recent decades. Will not the bureaucracy increase? Will we not see a further fragmentary proliferation of experts—those who know very much about very little?
A certain technophobia today seems often an appropriate response to the advances of digital technology in particular: to flee the smartphone, to disconnect from the internet, to find a distant land where one might farm, work a trade, live a quiet life. But this retreat promises only temporary refuge for a few, and for a brief time. Technocracy unchecked grows only ever larger and more invasive.
Rather, we must seek to implement a more properly-human form of governance: subsidiarity. And just as technocracy demands of us experts—those narrow-minded functionaries of a bureaucratic system—subsidiarity requests wisdom.
Can we have Expertise and Wisdom together?
This Wednesday’s chat (2/7) will be the first in a series of related Philosophical Happy Hours: followed by a conversation on the natures of science and engineering (2/21) and another on the implementation of subsidiarity (2/28). We hope you will join us for this discussion and aid us in thinking through how it is that we, as a society might foster a culture of properly relating expertise and wisdom!
Philosophical Happy Hour
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Come join us for drinks (adult or otherwise) and a meaningful conversation. Open to the public! Held every Wednesday from 5:45–7:15pm ET.
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