Does America Need an Aristocracy?

Please debate and discuss: I'm now of the opinion America needs an entitled aristocracy in order to save culture and individuality from being drowned under the values of the bourgeoisie. Whenever people look at countries they'd like America to be more like, the real similarity seems to be that they usually have an entitled aristocracy, though most don't also have royalty like England does. America already seems to have all the problems of aristocratic egocentricity in the form of a "bourgeoisocracy" which likes to brag about "hustling" 90-hour workweeks even goes so far as to idolize dropping out of college like Bill Gates. People aren't respected for staying in college and learning Chaucer and Milton and what have you. People think money is the end of all things when every rap fan knows money is literally called "means," and people don't like the idea of anyone being better than anyone else even in ways I'd consider unoffensive like preferring to watch Cinderella over Desperate Housewives, preferring to read A Picture of Dorian Gray over Fifty Shades of Grey, or preferring listening to Jimi Hendrix over an annoying middle school kid with an out-of-tune stratocaster. Even Yale students have internalized that value is money and money is value and stultify everyone in the conformity of postmodern values and philosophy. Aristocracy can't even be a bunch of Nazis or entitled brats if Sir Elton John is a literal knight. So, for the love of all that has non-monetary value, let's amend the Constitution and hand out titles to our Elton Johns.

Emerson wrote an essay called Aristocracy if anyone would like to discuss, and here are a couple of rambunctious but also correct articles I'm reposting.

Aristocracy
How the assault on American excellence at Yale–and all universities–threatens our democracy
Yale professor: Some humans are better at being human

This is some Nietzsche fandom shit

HARRISON BERGERON by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

since @squark mentioned it in the other thread.

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Originally Posted by squark

I haven't even read this yet, but I'm leaving the link here to read later, bc I think this "tall poppy syndrome" may be fairly widespread and the root of what you're talking about
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a29...b51b7e25a0.pdf

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what the fuck even is a "non-intellectual achiever" lmao

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Originally Posted by Grendel

This is some Nietzsche fandom shit

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Not if squark agrees with me, since I don't think she's a Nietzsche fan, and anyways, calling everyone a Nietzsche fan for thinking things are better is the genetic fallacy (not to be confused with some people's inferior genes.)

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Originally Posted by coeruleum

Not if squark agrees with me, since I don't think she's a Nietzsche fan, and anyways, calling everyone a Nietzsche fan for thinking things are better is the genetic fallacy (not to be confused with some people's inferior genes.)

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Welp, if you hold OP opinion, all the major reasons not to be a nietz fanboi are virtually obliterated.


On average I'd think the number of people who have to fear being totally obsolesced by machines or beaten into lifelong despair and alienation by a starving job market and toxic corporate culture far outweigh the minority of cancer scientists who get...rocks thrown at them or whatever......for some reason.....

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Originally Posted by squark

I haven't even read this yet, but I'm leaving the link here to read later, bc I think this "tall poppy syndrome" may be fairly widespread and the root of what you're talking about
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a29...b51b7e25a0.pdf

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I've heard of this before, but the problem is hurting other people usually only hurts you. If the Nazis go destroy a bunch of modern art, it doesn't make Nazi art better in any way. If I go eat unhealthy food because healthy food is for dem snoody people, I'm poisoning myself and waiting for the other person to die.

Oh, here's a related problem for the curious, people who seriously want to remove all job security for teachers and/or college professors, which means no one would get taught to read the things posted on this thread:

Abolish Tenure?
Do Nots and Dos When Defending Tenure
A History and Defense of Tenure

No, we need an Idiocracy. It's just American.

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Originally Posted by Grendel

Welp, if you hold OP opinion, all the major reasons not to be a nietz fanboi are virtually obliterated.


On average I'd think the number of people who have to fear being totally obsolesced by machines or beaten into lifelong despair and alienation by a starving job market and toxic corporate culture far outweigh the minority of cancer scientists who get...rocks thrown at them or whatever......for some reason.....

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Most jobs are BS jobs created to uphold the Needy Pyramid Scheme ("Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs") despite a virtually unlimited amount of free material resources being legally available in urban areas. I prefer calling postmodernity The Glut and the behavioral sink for a reason. Robots can't make people who are already obsolete obsolete, especially when they're OK with it due to social pressures.

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Originally Posted by MegaDoodoo

No, we need an Idiocracy. It's just American.

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Are you sure? Or are you... Not Sure?

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Originally Posted by Grendel

Welp, if you hold OP opinion, all the major reasons not to be a nietz fanboi are virtually obliterated.


On average I'd think the number of people who have to fear being totally obsolesced by machines or beaten into lifelong despair and alienation by a starving job market and toxic corporate culture far outweigh the minority of cancer scientists who get...rocks thrown at them or whatever......for some reason.....

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squark never expressly agreed, disagreed, or said she had an opinion at all though. She just expressed some degree of sympathy to the viewpoint, since she's probably pretty close to a cancer scientist who got a rock thrown at her since she actually works as an environmental scientist and Americans like metaphorically and occasionally literally throwing rocks.

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Originally Posted by coeruleum

squark never expressly agreed, disagreed, or said she had an opinion at all though. She just expressed some degree of sympathy to the viewpoint, since she's probably pretty close to a cancer scientist who got a rock thrown at her since she actually works as an environmental scientist and Americans like metaphorically and occasionally literally throwing rocks.

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No, I mean the idea you're suggesting is freaky. I don't see how you could think any overt aristocracy could possibly be "good" if you already have a problem with the middle-class, who themselves still have some but less exploitative power than an elite class would.


I mean, the Horse Metaphor is good for debunking a few things.....but it doesn't account for the behavior of the de facto corporate aristocrats. Because there's solid evidence out there that corporate culture is designed to make people more miserable to profit, and keep them economically insecure and exploitable even when providing for them might be mutually beneficial.

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Originally Posted by Grendel

No, I mean the idea you're suggesting is freaky. I don't see how you could think any overt aristocracy could possibly be "good" if you already have a problem with the middle-class, who themselves still have some but less exploitative power than an elite class would.


I mean, the Horse Metaphor is good for debunking a few things.....but it doesn't account for the behavior of the de facto corporate aristocrats. Because there's solid evidence out there that corporate culture is designed to make people more miserable to profit, and keep them economically insecure and exploitable even when providing for them might be mutually beneficial.

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I think competing standards of elitism would cancel out the negative aspects of either individually, and I think it's intellectual cowardice that, when Americans give a list of better countries than ours on various metrics, they're willing to adopt foreign education systems and foreign economic systems even when they associate them with suicide and genocide, but not consider foreign systems of social ranking even while acknowledging we do have a system of social ranking already and while thinking inequality of outcome is desirable based on their impressions of human nature.

While handing out titles might not be the answer and might even be a catastrophe in practice, I can't help but be reminded of the situation in American literature. Most of the world doesn't take American literature seriously and Americans don't take most of the rest of the world's literature seriously and the conflict shows itself exactly in Americans judging literature based on market value and ignoring literary prizes while other countries follow various prizes rather than book sales. People also refer to political movements around the world as "populism," especially if they're problematic. We clearly need an adrenaline shot of elitism to the heart even if aristocracy is as ridiculous as it sounds, which I don't think it is since entitled aristocrats don't all seem like a bunch of horrible people to me.

The "middle class" is not actually a middle class. It's an upper class with bourgeoisie values, which has existed since the bourgeoisie was recognized as a group. I don't relate to bourgeoisie values that threaten to consume everything else like some kind of metastatic tumor and only value things according to what they cost and sell for on a commodity market. I don't want to live in a world controlled solely by merchants and laborers, yet I'm given no other option. Even if my education, connections, and skills wouldn't give me a title, I'd still rather live in a world that recognizes better and worse and strives for the good rather than one that sweats like a horse and runs like a horse but only produces horseshit.

Here’s Why Almost Everyone Thinks They Are Part of the Middle Class

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Originally Posted by coeruleum

I think competing standards of elitism would cancel out the negative aspects of either individually, and I think it's intellectual cowardice that, when Americans give a list of better countries than ours on various metrics, they're willing to adopt foreign education systems and foreign economic systems even when they associate them with suicide and genocide, but not consider foreign systems of social ranking even while acknowledging we do have a system of social ranking already and while thinking inequality of outcome is desirable based on their impressions of human nature.

While handing out titles might not be the answer and might even be a catastrophe in practice, I can't help but be reminded of the situation in American literature. Most of the world doesn't take American literature seriously and Americans don't take most of the rest of the world's literature seriously and the conflict shows itself exactly in Americans judging literature based on market value and ignoring literary prizes while other countries follow various prizes rather than book sales. People also refer to political movements around the world as "populism," especially if they're problematic. We clearly need an adrenaline shot of elitism to the heart even if aristocracy is as ridiculous as it sounds, which I don't think it is since entitled aristocrats don't all seem like a bunch of horrible people to me.

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Foreign social rankings are going digital in a way civilization has never really been able to deal with before. We've never had a revolt against something like Zhima Credit before; we don't know that it'll even be possible to back out from once we've dipped in its waters.
I'd argue the computational dimension of a system like that means that humanity will never have a semblance of freedom again once the entire world has accepted such a system.


If you value true biodiversity of thought, and you don't want an overt, institutionally-sponsored digital credit system like that (NOT an implicit one like facefuckbook or all the other crap from Silicon Valley, I'm talking the perfected, full-metal Legalist versions from the East) squelching out all other systems the world over with its monolithy, then I'd think our first priority should be preventing things like Zhima Credit from taking root over here, not paying attention to the number of annoying europeans who hate Catcher in the Rye for whatever reason.

@Grendel

https://media3.giphy.com/media/XeXkZJJ8GoCbu/giphy.gif

Now is the time we need Raver. At least we all have Black Mirror and all his archived posts.

Unless you're using a different meaning for either word than is commonly understood, the bourgeoise are the "aristocracy." Correct me if I misunderstand, but you're proposing either we:

A) Restore a feudal-esque ruling class

B) Same as above, but membership in this ruling class is merited by cultural merit or something like that.

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Whenever people look at countries they'd like America to be more like, the real similarity seems to be that they usually have an entitled aristocracy, though most don't also have royalty like England does.

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It should be noted that the "aristocracies" you mention don't actually possess much power insofar as each member is not also a member of the bourgeoise.

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America already seems to have all the problems of aristocratic egocentricity in the form of a "bourgeoisocracy"

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“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships...” -Marx

In other words, that society has adopted "bourgeois values" is proof that the bourgeoise already comprise the ruling class. How do you propose replacing them? And if we're going to get rid of one ruling class, why not abolish class stratification altogether?

@FreelancePoliceman Yes, that's what I mean. The American ruling class is so strongly opposed to feudal-esque ideas it's insane. I would expect the two groups to have a large amount of overlap, but I don't want the mighty dollar to become the almighty dollar, which it has. My dad has spent $100,000 on comic books and he doesn't seem to have read them. Buying comic books, also known as what Comic Book Guy in The Simpsons likes, solely as a form of social capital and not even reading them is the epitome of "late capitalism" also known as The Glut since I'm not sure capitalism is dying though something clearly is. Money has negative value when you look at it, so the rotting corpse of dead capitalism with insects feeding on it is about right.

There's no way to abolish class stratification. Even Marx wasn't a Marxist at the end of his life. Also: why would you want to? If you force class equality on everyone, not only will all the people who like being superior die, all the people who like being inferior will die. I think we can only make one society of stratified people and one society of equal people and avoid trying to go to war at best.

@FreelancePoliceman I don't think that's a different meaning than commonly understood. I specifically referred to titles and aristocracy, not simply the upper class.

This reminds me: I wonder if the "gig economy" means the proletariat will gain on the bourgeoisie. There are already workers with more money than property owners: successful artists (especially the ones who make millions,) professors, programmers, etc. That's not the image "worker" brings to mind, and people always resent them, because people would rather make money influencing things than make money taking it from other people who are actually influencing things. There's a reason terrorists like to claim credit for attacks they didn't do and never deny credit for attacks they did. If only the bourgeoisie would be more like terrorists.

The Intellectual Yet Idiot

philosophers ftw

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With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3 of the time、

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You know what they all have in common? Fields that are entirely based on inductivism... overreliance on "statistics" and "correlations", without having explanations for why things are the way they are, and ignoring or downplaying of causation.

If you say that something is "statistically significant" because it has "60% chance of being correct" (whatever that means), then of course the result is going to be mediocre with less than 40% success rate of replication.

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Originally Posted by squark

A comment on the Yale guy . . . titles don't equal excellence. I don't have a problem recognizing someone's time and effort with a title but that isn't what distinguishes a person. Yes, recognize them for what they've done, but don't fail to recognize others in different fields as well. What a person studies, pshaw, that doesn't matter imo. Like the poem I posted where each of us can show our best and bring others up with us, I like a quote from this short book The Coming Aristocracy


And this is an argument against the Yale guy who seems to think having a particular kind of education is what matters. The following is a quote I much agree with. Pride in one's work, whatever that work may be and a striving towards excellence is not limited to any specific group of any specific kind of education.



So yeah, it's this spirit of striving for excellence that I think we need more of, and not titles or worship of a specific class of people. Striving to be and do one's best rather than striving for money, fame or power.

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To be fair, I think the "kind of education" that suffers due to bourgeoisie careerism is "all education," but especially anything that seems feudal or European. His analysis is not right but the story about Yale students going like "slavery!" was amusing.

I don't think titles make a person either but see the American revolt against literary awards, and also the truly bourgeoisie artist who doesn't see the point in actually sculpting when he can hire people. We could do with a lot more formal recognition of people even if Nietzsche fanboyism is not the answer.

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Originally Posted by coeruleum

Please debate and discuss: I'm now of the opinion America needs an entitled aristocracy in order to save culture and individuality from being drowned under the values of the bourgeoisie.

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This is where you go wrong: thinking that the problem is caused by the bourgeoisie and the lack of an aristocracy. You are leaving out the group that was created by the Industrial Revolution, i.e. the working class, or proletariat.

The Middle Ages were the age of the aristocracy, the Modernity is the age of the bourgeoisie and Post-Modernity is the age of the working class. The Postmodern age is what we are currently heavily moving into, and it will be dominated by the culture of the working classes, that have, in an economic sense, been upwardly mobile, but culturally have pretty much stayed on imbecile levels of behaviors driven by a need for short term gratification. You can see it on facebook and twitter day after day.

This is what drives current western societies: the bourgeois are losing cultural power in favor of working class. Now lots of working class people nowadays do not consider themselves working class, because they think they have been upwardly mobile relative to their parents and grandparents, but like I said, that's just in the economic sense. In the cultural sense, they still have working class attitudes.

You do not believe me? Well, read this and I rest my case:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/05/u...ing/index.html

People queuing and getting aggressive over chicken sandwiches? GTFOOH!

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Originally Posted by Singu

You know what they all have in common? Fields that are entirely based on inductivism... overreliance on "statistics" and "correlations", without having explanations for why things are the way they are, and ignoring or downplaying of causation.

If you say that something is "statistically significant" because it has "60% chance of being correct" (whatever that means), then of course the result is going to be mediocre with less than 40% success rate of replication.

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Now go get an academic job. Captain Academia to the rescue!

[IMG]https://am24.akamaized.net/tms/cnt/uploads/2018/06/cap-punches-******.gif[/IMG]

Nietzsche would probably say put down your master and slave moralities and become a free spirit.

The opening post here tells me the person speaking doesn't even understand the words they're saying, what they individually want in life nor any direction, nor what culture is and the good and bad that it brings. It is the plaintive wail of a masochist looking for a master.

It's quite tragic, please find yourself before you become more of a stooge.

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Originally Posted by mu4

Nietzsche would probably say put down your master and slave moralities and become a free spirit.

The opening post here tells me the person speaking doesn't even understand the words they're saying, what they individually want in life nor any direction, nor what culture is and the good and bad that it brings. It is the plaintive wail of a masochist looking for a master.

It's quite tragic, please find yourself before you become more of a stooge.

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LOL

Go be a "free spirit" covered in breadcrumbs, sweat, and grease in the basement.

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Originally Posted by coeruleum

LOL

Go be a "free spirit" covered in breadcrumbs, sweat, and grease in the basement.

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Said by a true house slave.

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Originally Posted by mu4

Said by a true house slave.

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Why do you sit and fart resent the whole world for being inaccessible to you even after having read all your philosophers? I've also never heard of a "house slave" in Nietzsche, so for someone who feels the desire to not think for himself and measures his value by the names he drops, that's rather rich.

All I know is that we gotta bring back the habsburgs.

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Originally Posted by Muddy

All I know is that we gotta bring back the habsburgs.

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https://i.imgur.com/5fUHeN2.jpg

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Originally Posted by squark

I like a quote from this short book The Coming Aristocracy

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I'm reading this whole book and now it's discussing libertarianism and the Foundation for Financial Education. It's always such a paradox that free markets and socialism both end up sounding wonderful when defined by their advocates, yet I don't think anyone seriously identifies as a free market socialist. "Free markets" are always "the ability to buy and sell without coercion" and "socialism" is always "the workers own the means of production." People owning their means of production, setting the prices they'd like to sell at, and choosing the prices they'd like to buy at without outside parties interfering seems like a trivial position to me, yet no one seems to take it seriously.

Beta aristocracy plz

I hate all of your thoughts.

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Originally Posted by Alonzo

I hate all of your thoughts.

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Silence peasant.

If you want two more revolutions then yes.

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Originally Posted by Alonzo

I hate all of your thoughts.

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Well, you're in a stupid quadra that doesn't even value Ti.

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Originally Posted by coeruleum

Well, you're in a stupid quadra that doesn't even value Ti.

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You perfectly illustrate the limitations of Ti and all subjective functions when the foundations of one's internal world are built upon a porous trash heap > garbage in = garbage out.

Honestly, I just wish your unruly, uninspiring Ne and struggle Ti (seems PoLR tbh) were collectively shot in the face. You seem bored, shut in and desperately in need of another outlet. And I'm tired of you visiting that boredom upon undeserving innocents. Your threads read like ill conceived, juvenile, rudimentary troll fodder. You take the long, meandering, not particularly scenic route just to barely make a cogent point (that others quickly arrive at while you come late to the party bearing no gifts). And that's rather unsatisfying and intensely frustrating.

Tl;Dr STFU.

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Originally Posted by Alonzo

You perfectly illustrate the limitations of Ti and all subjective functions when the foundations of one's internal world are built upon a porous trash heap > garbage in = garbage out.

Honestly, I just wish your unruly, uninspiring Ne and struggle Ti (seems PoLR tbh) were collectively shot in the face. You seem bored, shut in and desperately in need of another outlet. And I'm tired of you visiting that boredom upon undeserving innocents. Your threads read like ill conceived, juvenile, rudimentary troll fodder. You take the long, meandering, not particularly scenic route just to barely make a cogent point (that others quickly arrive at while you come late to the party bearing no gifts). And that's rather unsatisfying and intensely frustrating.

Tl;Dr STFU.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kME6JH-eaw

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Originally Posted by Alonzo

You perfectly illustrate the limitations of Ti and all subjective functions when the foundations of one's internal world are built upon a porous trash heap > garbage in = garbage out.

Honestly, I just wish your unruly, uninspiring Ne and struggle Ti (seems PoLR tbh) were collectively shot in the face. You seem bored, shut in and desperately in need of another outlet. And I'm tired of you visiting that boredom upon undeserving innocents. Your threads read like ill conceived, juvenile, rudimentary troll fodder. You take the long, meandering, not particularly scenic route just to barely make a cogent point (that others quickly arrive at while you come late to the party bearing no gifts). And that's rather unsatisfying and intensely frustrating.

Tl;Dr STFU.

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https://media.giphy.com/media/QrGJ5U1oSKum4/giphy.gif

are people in USA and other capitalistic states equal? it's not evidently
was there else sometimes? no
will there be? dobtfully

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Originally Posted by Sol

are people in USA and other capitalistic states equal? it's not evidently
was there else sometimes? no
will there be? dobtfully

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https://media.tenor.com/images/adbca...dca4/tenor.gif

Apparently New Zealand would be 20% richer if its society was more equal (not in a Marxist way) - NZ is hardly known for being an unequal society. The last thing the US needs is more of an aristocracy than it already has.

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Originally Posted by Subteigh

Apparently New Zealand would be 20% richer if its society was more equal (not in a Marxist way) - NZ is hardly known for being an unequal society. The last thing the US needs is more of an aristocracy than it already has.

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But those are hobbits! We're elves! (Kidding)

what "culture" would be preserved? america has no culture :content:

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Originally Posted by maniac

what "culture" would be preserved? america has no culture :content:

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Tell me the last time a Swede even saw a Nobel Prize that wasn't simply to give it to someone else. All Sweden has is metal bands and IKEA, which are lovely, but not as much as America has.

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Originally Posted by coeruleum

Tell me the last time a Swede even saw a Nobel Prize that wasn't simply to give it to someone else. All Sweden has is metal bands and IKEA, which are lovely, but not as much as America has.

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you still didn't answer the question. id love to know what culture america has but from my experience it's simply built up off several cultures from other places and theres nothing really "american" besides hamburgers. this is what a lot americans also say. a lot of americans will emphasize their ethnicity from their ancestors even though there is no one left in their family speaking that language or anything. why? probably because america doesn't have much of a culture, or nothing that is extraordinary or anything to be proud of anyway... it hasn't been around long enough to cultivate an own culture yet.
is winning the nobel prize what you mean with culture? you realise the nobel prize is swedish, right?

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Originally Posted by maniac

you still didn't answer the question. id love to know what culture america has but from my experience it's simply built up off several cultures from other places and theres nothing really "american" besides hamburgers. is winning the nobel prize what you mean with culture? you realise the nobel prize is swedish, right?

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1. Hamburgers are German, so that's not what I mean.
2. Swedes don't win Nobel prizes, just hand them out (and considering the lobotomy and Peter Handke both won one, I'm not sure it means much, but a country not winning any for a long time is still a Bad Sign.)

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Originally Posted by coeruleum

1. Hamburgers are German, so that's not what I mean.
2. Swedes don't win Nobel prizes, just hand them out (and considering the lobotomy and Peter Handke both won one, I'm not sure it means much, but a country not winning any for a long time is still a Bad Sign.)

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i don't understand why you're making this about sweden when this thread is about america. i never said that sweden has won more nobel prizes than america. sweden relative to america is really tiny so the probability of winning a nobel prize is relatively low.

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Originally Posted by maniac

you still didn't answer the question. id love to know what culture america has but from my experience it's simply built up off several cultures from other places and theres nothing really "american" besides hamburgers. this is what a lot americans also say. a lot of americans will emphasize their ethnicity from their ancestors even though there is no one left in their family speaking that language or anything. why? probably because america doesn't have much of a culture, or nothing that is extraordinary or anything to be proud of anyway... it hasn't been around long enough to cultivate an own culture yet.
is winning the nobel prize what you mean with culture? you realise the nobel prize is swedish, right?

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The US produces a lot of "culture" that is consumed around the globe, which makes it difficult to give examples of "culture" that is distinctly American (that has not been adopted by others) and which can be considered "culture", rather than trash. Also, generally if "culture" is popular, it is considered trash and if it is otherwise, it is not widely recognized as representative of the US as a whole.