Our ruling class is a monoculture, prone to fads and disease. By Glenn Reynolds.
Repeatedly, we see waves in which something that nobody much cared about suddenly comes to dominate ruling class discourse. Almost in synchrony, a wide range of institutions begin to talk about it, and to be preoccupied by it, even as every leading figure virtue-signals regarding this subject which, only a month or two previously, hardly any of them even knew about, much less cared about.
There are several factors behind this, but one of the most important, I think, is that our ruling class is a monoculture. …
Electoral turnover in democracies produces a moving target for special-interest groups (the political analog of parasites) and thus helps keep them from becoming too well adapted to the society that is their host. As evolutionary biologist Thomas Ray observed, every successful system accumulates parasites, and the United States of America has been very successful indeed. I suggested that part of its success lay in electoral shifts that served keep special interests from locking in their positions entirely….
But … electoral turnover only affects one small piece of society. While elections change out elected officials sometimes, the rest of our society — the bureaucracy, academia, media, corporate leadership, what is generally known as the “gentry” or “ruling class” — remains the same. …
When Elon Musk referred to the dangers of the “woke mind virus,” he knew exactly what he was talking about. Ideas can be contagious, and can be viewed as analogous to viruses, entities that reproduce by infecting individuals and coopting those individuals into spreading them to others. …
Our ruling class is particularly vulnerable to mind viruses for several reasons. First, it is a monoculture, so that what is persuasive to one member is likely to be persuasive to many.
Second, it suffers from deep and widespread status anxiety — not least because most of its members have status, but few real accomplishments to rely on — and thus requires constant reassurance in the form of peer acceptance, reassurance that is generally achieved by repeating whatever the popular people are saying already. And third, it has few real deeply held values, which might otherwise provide guard rails of a sort against believing crazy things.
In a more diverse ruling class, ideas would not spread so swiftly or be received so uncritically. People with different worldviews would respond differently to ideas as they entered the world of discourse. There would be criticism and there would be debate. …
Even an atheist might prefer a society in which most people believe in safely-aged religions to one in which dangerous idea-viruses are more likely to run rampant. As G.K. Chesterton famously said, “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” …
It may even be the case that people who wanted to spread certain sorts of ideas in society found it advantageous to reduce the influence of “well-aged religion” because they saw it as a barrier. Likewise, the promotion of a cult of youth-as-wisdom helped to insulate younger people from the experience of their elders, diminishing the influence of a potential moderating force. …
What should we do if we want a less-hysterical, more sensible ruling class? (My own preference would be not to have one, but that’s basically impossible, I think, given aspects of the human character that are better discussed in another essay. And as the saying goes, even in an anarchy, if it is functional you will find a well-established old boys’ network.) …
Since a major reason for its uniformity is that its leaders are educated in the same schools — often literally the same handful of schools … we should first pursue more diversity in schools, and second try to minimize the relevance of education in terms of membership in the ruling class. …
We should also try to foster the development of tycoons. Sometimes (*cough* Mark Zuckerberg *cough*) they just ape the rest of the ruling class. But other times, as with Elon Musk, they are disruptive forces.
