"Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>In any case, however, if our society was run by experts,
>it *might* look like the noble vision of H.G. Wells'
>film "The Shape of Things to Come", but it might
>also be an autistic idiotocracy (using "idiot" in the
>classical Greek sense, not of having a low IQ, but
>of being unable to participate meaningfully in the
>life of the polity / "polis").
Would it be too cynical to suggest that that sounds a lot like what
we already have? Well, maybe not to such an extreme, but perhaps
it is just a matter of which kind of idiot. A lot of politicians who
successfully access public office seem to me to have an outlook which
is insular and elitist, occupying a sort of separate public policy
makers culture. I fear I would feel better represented by the expert
idiots, who might presumably inhabit the academic science culture
which at least overlaps the idiosyncratic cultural synthesis I
embody.
Say, speaking of expertocracy, does anyone remember the Technocracy
Party, with their grey cars with the red and white yin/yang symbol?
They had a significant presence in Vancouver, with a headquarters
building stubbornly clinging to life into the late seventies, and
diehard adherents preaching the virtues of expertocracy, voices
in the wilderness as isolated as the maoists and trotskyists,
probably even moreso. Theirs was an idea whose time clearly hadn't
yet come.
-Pete Vincent
