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Musings Report 2024-49 12-7-24 The Three Types of Elites
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The Three Types of Elites
I'm occasionally accused of elitism, and this raises a socially relevant question: what do we mean by "elite"?
Let's start with a taxonomy of elitism: how many types of elites are there?
It seems to me there are three basic types:
1. Elites defined by birth. This includes those born to privileges unavailable to commoners, and those born with extraordinary physical-intellectual capabilities.
The first type includes royalty / nobility and influential, wealthy families who pass land, wealth and productive enterprises on to their offspring: in both cases, a privileged status is acquired at birth.
Examples of the second type include gifted athletes such as Jim Thorpe and Joe Namath and intellectually gifted polymaths and savants.
2. Elite status earned via an institutionalized meritocracy. The classic example is China's Imperial system of rigorous exams that identified the most capable commoners to perform the demanding work of the Imperial bureaucracy. In the present era, credentials earned from prestigious universities open the doors to employment in top institutions--the equivalent of the institutionalized Imperial meritocracy.
These are the elites that historian Peter Turchin identifies as being "overproduced" in the sense that there aren't enough jobs of the expected status for the graduates of the merit-based institutions.
3. The third type of elitism is self-created, as it is based on acquired knowledge and skill, not on institutional recognition or birthright. it's an elitism gained by real-world experience in the crucible of unforgiving feedback / results, trial and error.
This process is what author Donald Schon described in his book The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action: the difference between the kind of learning that can be formalized (and thus automated)--what he called technical rationality--and the process of gaining knowledge we cannot describe with any precision, nor explain how we gained it, which Schon called "reflection-in-action."
Michael Polanyi's 1958 book Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy described this experiential knowledge base as tacit knowledge, the sort that doesn't lend itself to formalized databases and rules (algorithms).
This level of ability gained by diligence and experience is described by the Taoist Zhuang Zhou (Chuang Tzu in a previous era) in stories of butchers whose blade never dulls because they never hit bone. These reflect that the Tao manifests in skills mastered by years of discipline and effort in unique situations with uncertain solutions--precisely what is beyond the reach of formal learning or rules-based systems (i.e. AI).
As I noted in last week's Musings, at this level, your hands do the work "all by themselves," without conscious guidance. Your mind isn't wandering, it's observant, but no more than that. You let the work get done by staying out of its way.
In other words, this third type of elitism is acquired by gaining abilities that are in the upper reaches of the trade or profession. These tend to follow the Pareto Distribution, where the top 20% of the salespeople sell 80% of the volume, the top 20% of landowners end up owning 80% of the land, and so on.
The 80/20 Pareto Distribution boils down to a even narrower 64/4 distribution (80% of 80%, and 20% of 20%) in which the top 4% generate 64% of the results.
The big difference between the first two types of elites--status gained by birth or institutionally accredited merit--and this third type is that it is often unrecognized, as reflected in the classic book The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty (1972).
We all have examples of the difference between institutionally accredited merit and high abilities that go unrewarded. For example, two artists have creative skills, but the one who achieves institutionally accredited recognition becomes a tenured professor with all the perquisites and security of that institutional position while the other artist teaches a few classes and lives in his car because that's all he can afford.
The artist living in his car may well be the more gifted, but without an elite credential / institutional position, earning recognition and a livelihood are much harder.
There are many interesting complexities in this third type of elite. Those with skills valued by the economy can do very well for themselves, while those whose achievements have little economic value will have to earn a living doing some sort of work that is valued.
One of my favorite examples is composer Philip Glass, who supported his family by working as a plumber, furniture mover and taxi driver. He was finally paid for composing music in his 50s. Glass was institutionally recognized as talented, but this didn't lead to a position or income equal to his talent.
Fashion, personality, prejudice and luck all play into how the third type of elite fares. Some remain "unknown elites" their entire lives, while others get a chance to show what they can do and achieve conventional success.
"Elitism" is often tossed around as an accusation of undeserved privilege. When applied to elitism gained by institutionally credentialed merit, the accusation widens to being disconnected from the realities of the non-elites.
This disconnect is reflected in this chart of trust in the institutions which distribute recognition and elite status.
The concentration of super-elites in a handful of institutions that create opportunities via networking is another source of disconnect not just from the bottom 90% but from the top 9.9%.
Paul Novosad (@paulnovosad) cited the research paper Where Did the Global Elite Go to School? Hierarchy, Harvard, Home and Hegemony by Ricardo Salas-Diaz and Kevin Young in this X thread. (via Tom D.)
Novosad summarized the concentration of elites thusly:
"It's much more likely that this is about networks (rather than the quality of the education). You rub shoulders with the children of billionaires and corporate titans, they open doors for you for your whole career.
This also speaks to the misallocation of talent. There are a lot of brilliant kids who didn't have the parental background to make it to a fancy institution — we want to build pathways for these kids into elite positions.
Finally, it's no surprise that elites are increasingly out of touch with ordinary people — a lot of them haven't had much contact with them since age 17 or earlier."
This suggests the accusations of "born to privilege" and "disconnected from the commoners" both reflect the realities of elite status.
As for the accusations of elitism thrown at me from time to time, since I don't qualify for the first two types, that leaves the third type, self-created elite status earned by diligence, effort and unforgiving contact with real-world results. So I'm honored by the accusation, thank you very much.
This reminds me of the Toshiro Mifune character (Sanjuro) in Akira Kurosawa's classic action films, Yojimbo and Sanjuro, which feature Mifune's scruffy ronin, a wandering masterless samurai at the bottom of the samurai class, essentially a sword-for-hire scraping by.
Sanjuro's visibly low status earns him the nickname "two-bit" in the first film, and in the second he's called a "bum." But his sword skills and keen insight into human nature gained from unforgiving experience enable him to best the high-born despite the advantages of their wealth, power and cunning.
His advice is dismissed until his earned-by-unforgiving-experience authority is recognized. It's not the authority granted by institutions or credentials, it's the authority that comes from self-confidence, which Mifune expresses in a gruff, almost insulting manner. In a culture of polite deference and modesty, this could be taken as arrogance, but it's not. It's simply the knowledge gained from "reflection-in-action" expressed without the niceties of false modesty.
When self-confidence is accused of elitism, the accusation smacks of envy. In a social order in which all opinions are deemed equal, elitism gained by effort, diligence and "reflection-in-action" is as suspect as the elitism of birth and institutional status.
My impression of arrogance is that arises from insecurity, and so the arrogant, resentful of the self-confident, accuse them of what the arrogant know all too well--arrogance.
Self-confidence instills confidence in others. One famous example in the sports world occurred in the 1989 Superbowl game between the Bengals and the 49ers. The 49ers were down 16-13 with 3 minutes left in the game, and the players were tense, another way of saying their confidence was shaky. 49er quarterback Joe Montana glanced up in the stands, spotted a celebrity comedian and said, "Look, isn't that John Candy?" This almost boyish joy in the moment--"hey, isn't this great? There's John Candy!"--broke the tension because it showed that Joe's confidence in his own skills and his teammates was supremely relaxed. Joe threw a touchdown pass to receiver John Taylor with 34 seconds left on the clock, winning the game.
So which kind of elite do you want to associate with? I'll take the third kind of elite, the kind that wasn't coddled, the kind that's free of both brittle arrogance and false modesty, the kind that knows all too well that things can go wrong but their experience helps them correct course on the fly. In other words, the most adaptable, the most attuned to unforgiving results, the kind that may well be scruffy and blunt and able to have fun.
Highlights of the Blog
What Happened to Integrity and Honor? 12/6/24
Fix This or Nothing Else Matters 12/3/24
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
The guilty pleasure of tacos from the one authentic taco truck in town.
What's on the Book Shelf
The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy
From Left Field
NOTE TO NEW READERS: This list is not comprised of articles I agree with or that I judge to be correct or of the highest quality. It is representative of the content I find interesting as reflections of the current zeitgeist. The list is intended to be perused with an open, critical, occasionally amused mind.
Many links are behind paywalls. Most paywalled sites allow a few free articles per month if you register. It's the New Normal.
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"I never give them hell. I just tell the truth, and they think it is hell." Harry Truman
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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