Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class—A Status Update - Quillette
This article describes the confluence of two intellectual sewer lines. The first is the "status needs of the wealthy" intellectual sewer line. The second is the "immature individual's need to hide their deep flaws and imperfections" intellectual sewer line. The first is what Thorstein Veblen and the author, Rob Henderson, spend the bulk of their time discussing. The second is best understood by reading Eric Hoffer's book, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements One of the points Hoffer makes is that individuals who recognize that they are imperfect but who are not mature enough to understand and accept their imperfections make optimum True Believers in a cult/mass movement. The progressive movement was and is a secular mass movement/cult. The cult manifests in the secondary secular cults of environmentalism, climate alarmism, and the other apocalyptical leftist beliefs which surface quite often but seldom gain traction due to their silliness (population bomb, ozone hole, acid rain. While these children at university do theoretically fall into the wealthy category, they more accurately fall into the True Believer category. The article does a fine job of outlining the wealthy category and I recommend it to you. The True Believer category is driven by the fact that these immature adults hate the self, the imperfections in the self, and the fact that there is a small chip of evil in each of us. It is their recognition of the fact that they have evil within them that drives them to find a way to cover that evil so no one else can see it. The secular cults like environmentalism and climate alarmism offer a near-perfect mechanism for covering the evil within the self. This is not an accident, the model is designed to achieve this purpose, it cannot exist or grow without this feature at its core. It works because the group offers the individual an opportunity to "save the world" by joining the group and following the mass movement's cant to the letter. Only by strictly obeying, and complying with the group's demands can the individual receive the group's support and accolades. Once the self-hating individual receives these benefits, they become strongly attached to the mass movement. This attachment and the emotional protection it provides is as strong as any addictive drug. The individual, now within the movement and needing to believe the dogma and act out the cant to the letter, is impervious to reason, argument, rhetoric, or logic as to why the movement's cant is false. The need for the protection offered by the movement outweighs the need to eliminate any cognitive dissonance. Just as the heroin addict can rationalize away socially unacceptable and criminal behavior, so the True Believer can rationalize away facts, logic, and reason. At elite universities, one of the key factors playing into the need for these mass movements is affirmative action. The immature adults accepted by the university often cannot compete with the students accepted on intellectual merit. The high intellectual level of the merit accepted students if far beyond the capability of many of those accepted via affirmative action. The result is that many of the colored students have trouble learning at the speed with which the classes are taught. These student's grades suffer, and they become frustrated. They also recognize that generally colored students do poorly when compared to other students. This is blamed on the racism of the professors, the administrators, the system, and the public more generally. It isn't racism, it is a mismatch that happens when those with lower intellectual abilities are placed in a pool of highly intellectual individuals. The cure is not more affirmative action, it is to address the problem of poor quality teaching in our K-12 education system particularly in our inner cities and colored communities, and perhaps even more important to repair the dilapidated state of the colored family. But these immature individuals can do none of this, what they can do is either accept that they have been mismatched in their university and move to a better match or join a mass movement and receive the protection of the cult. The mature do the former, the immature do the latter. Progressivism has always been a mass movement. The Democratic Party used to be a political party but it is now a part of the progressive mass movement. Mass movements are dangerous; secular mass movements are the most dangerous. The Catholic Church before reformation became a dangerous and deadly mass movement but it was a piker when compared to any of the secular mass movements. The same can be said for Islam today and its Islamist Mass Movement. These are dangerous but they cannot hold a candle to the truly deadly secular mass movements like Maoism, Leninist/Stalinist socialism, Nazism, or any of the other socialist movements. These secular mass movements generate huge followings and quickly become murderous, er, mass-murderous. We need to reform our government, including our schools K-12, higher education, and beyond. We have allowed these institutions to become deadly breeding grounds for dangerous secular mass movements. We are not just doing great damage to our young people, particularly our immature young, but we are endangering our entire nation if we allow these mass movements to survive and thrive in such a large percentage of our young people. The leaders in the political left, whether the progressives in the Democratic Party or the progressives in the Republican Party like the power these mass movements offer them. They understand that these movements will let them continue to mine the graft and corruption the progressive politicians live on. They also understand that these mass movements are a tool that allows them to consolidate power. Ultimately, this often proves dangerous to the political leaders which is why so many of these leaders turn into totalitarian mass murders, in part to consolidate power, and in part to control their excessively zealous acolytes. If this were just virtue seeking, and status grubbing, I could live with it. Luxury beliefs are ugly and damaging to society especially the lower classes and those with lower IQs. But this is not deadly, the mass movements, however, are deadly, and cannot be tolerated.
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