In case you missed it, what came out over the last few days, was a talk that Bloomberg gave a couple years ago, where he'd spoken about how 'the economy' has evolved over time, and how it will soon leave farmers & manual workers behind:
“...The agrarian society lasted 3,000 years and we could teach processes. I could teach anybody, even people in this room, no offense intended, to be a farmer, It’s a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn. You could learn that. Then we had 300 years of the industrial society. You put the piece of metal on the lathe, you turn the crank in the direction of the arrow and you can have a job. And we created a lot of jobs. At one point 98% of the world, worked in agriculture, today it's 2% in the United States. Now comes the information economy and the information economy is fundamentally different because it's built around replacing people with technology and the skill sets that you have to learn are how to think and analyze, and that is a whole degree level different. You have to have a different skill set, you have to have a lot more gray matter. It's not clear the teachers can teach or the students can learn, and so the challenge of society of finding jobs for these people, who we can take care of giving them a roof over their head and a meal in their stomach and a cell phone and a car and that sort of thing. But the thing that is the most important, that will stop them from setting up a guillotine someday, is the dignity of a job...."(WTH?)
"Oh yeah! Wow you're soOo wrong! Farmers don't follow just simple dots, they follow complicated dots! And lots more dots than billionaires & tech people do!"Now just think about that for a moment... what sort of questions were people asking themselves, to lead them to those replies? And aren't those replies essentially saying that they are better people than Bloomberg & his ideal Techies, because Farmers really do make oodles of sooper-dee-duper calculations - isn't that agreeing with the 'principle' of what Bloomberg was saying? That connecting and calculating the dots is the measure of man's mind & value? And doesn't that mean that their only disagreement with Bloomberg is over who it is, that are the better people?
I'm not saying so to call anyone right or wrong here, but to draw your attention to the fact that that is what our 'educational system' has been teaching us for over a century now, in a myriad number of ways, such as stressing how important it is to go to college and get a 'good job', so that you don't get 'stuck' in one of those embarrassing non-professional dead end jobs that involve getting your hands dirty. Your ears should be practically ringing with he echoes here.
For myself, I seriously disagree with all of the flavors of these arguments. But most of all, I want to point out that to confuse Education, with training people to perform certain technical steps - basic or advanced - comes from a materialistic, slave oriented perspective, which ultimately has tyrannical ends aimed at the subjugation of man, even when it is done for 'the greater good!'. But... that's another post.
The better responses that many people did make to Bloomberg's foolishness, BTW, were those that tended towards Paul Harvey's "So God Made A Farmer", which is much closer to the mark that we should be aiming at, and it's well worth noting how the points it focuses on, are points which Bloomberg and all elitists (which includes any who think that their pursuits or positions puts them above other people) of all walks of life, entirely miss.
A person's ability to follow steps and perform calculations, is not the measure of a man, but measuring men by that scale does typify the perspective of tyrants.
Those who believe that their ends justify any means they deem necessary to use in achieving them, need a means of measuring the usefulness of people in order to more efficiently fit them into being another brick in their wall; they need cookie cutter systems and standardized tests (and scythes to cut the tall poppies down), to efficiently quantify, weigh and measure their 'human capital' with.
What the tyrannically minded have little need for, are answers to less quantifiable questions, such as are you a person of character? Are you dependable? Capable? Are you moral? Are you concerned with what is real, good & true? Are you both willing to learn new steps and processes, and also willing and able to be counted upon to care for your fellows? Are you kind to pets? Are you considerate to people you don't need to be kind to, and are you respectful towards your other personal & business responsibilities?
Those are the kinds of questions and measures of intelligence that are worth asking from a Human perspective, in taking the measure of a person, and answering them requires the use of slow and inefficient human observation, reasoning & judgement, rather than the speedy and well defined answers that abound from ranks of follow-the-dots calculations. Those who're in pursuit of their ends without much concern for the means used in reaching them, have little use for such questions, because those people who're likely to be identified by them, are poorly suited to being stamped out in cookie-cutter molds, and are typically resistant to being formed into bricks that'll fit snugly into your wall.
Not so coincidentally, those in pursuit of ends which justify their means, are interested in teaching people to forget about asking larger questions such as those, preferring instead that they habituate themselves to asking an entirely different kind of questions. Questions that are easily measured & quantified and fit into useful positions, such as those that closely resemble most of the responses that Bloomberg received to his statement. It might be worthwhile to ask yourself, what sorts of questions have worked their way into your own thinking? I understand that you might resent being characterized in that way, I sure do, but how aware are you that our public education system was explicitly designed to, as the man who'd latter become the 28th President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, once explained to a meeting of the Federation of High School teachers, that:
"...We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks..."Sure, you probably don't often find yourself consciously reducing your fellow man to the status of tools and 'human capital'... not outright at any rate, but you've certainly been taught to think of the world in that way. And while you may be sure that such thoughts haven't found their way into your thinking... have you checked? Do you... for instance... want your kids to get a 'good education' in order to get a 'good job'? Do you think of getting a good education, and schools teaching classes that'll be 'good for the economy', as being the same thing? Do you want to see more STEM classes in school? Do you vote for politicians who promise to 'fix' members of our society? To regulate (mandate) how people live their lives and do their jobs? No...? Not in healthcare? Not in prescription drugs? Not in Education? ... Insurance? ...Entertainment? ...Big Tech? ...Wall Street?
If not, congratulations, well done. I still find hints of such things popping up in the back of my mind now & then... they don't often get a step further than that, but they are there, and I know a great number of folks on 'The Right' who habitually take more than a few steps down one of those roads. Often. That's not something to deny, but to be very much aware of, because it's less than a small step from there, to Bloomberg & the Emperors of Ice Cream's way of seeing your fellow man as 'human capital'. It takes only a slight turn of mind, from reasoning upon history, to 'critical thinking' about STEM subjects for instance (oh, do you often call for more 'Critical Thinking' in our schools? Have you ever wondered when and where (and Why?) that term came from (Hint: 'Critical Thinking' originated in the 1940's... do you think that our Founding Fathers suffered from a lack of those 'critical thinking skills'?)? You really should think some about that, as monsters do lurk in the shadows, ya know), to begin evaluating people by their economic function (job), and by their wealth and status (no doubt you don't look down on poor people, but... do you ever look down on 'the rich'?).
Sure, you're unlikely to begin advising the terminating of elderly people's lives based upon an expected ROI from their medical procedures, or even to outright change the rules you originally agreed to play by, like Mike 'lets run for three-terms anyway' Bloomberg, did. But, as with the differences between being a Democrat, a Democratic Socialist, and a Communist... those are only differences in degree, not in kind.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we do have problems in the United States of America. But how detailed the processes of your job are, or how much 'grey matter' some fool thinks you have, or worse, actually tested & calculated you to have, isn't our real problem. Our problems have much more to do with not realizing that that type of thinking, which we've been taught for over a century to thoughtlessly think of and accept as being normal, is our real problem.
Again, did you respond to Bloomberg's put-down of farmers & laborers for not having enough grey matter skills, by saying they have more such skills than he does? I'll admit it, that was my first thought. But did you have any second thoughts, about your first thought? Don't let the truth fall prey to your first answers (which is another thing that automated testing teaches you to do without thinking), keep on questioning the answers you come up with.
To take matters a step further, if you value the attention getting skills of smartness, over the more subtle and humble plodding of wisdom, not only are you part of the problem, but you're making yourself into another brick in the wall. And remember, however comfortable you may or may not be with that, just keep in mind that the Democrat candidates for President of the United States, don't think it's worth debating.
