Thomas Lunde wrote,
>This idea, common among those who write about
>unemployment but who do not experience it, is that if only they could search
>more and harder and better, then everyone would find a job.
>
>Surely we can be a little more creative than this Darwinian methodology. If
>this is the result of higher education, then thank god I ain't got one.
The social Darwinian view is not a result of higher education per se, but a
result of a perverse "selective selection". I apologize for the ugly term,
but it is scientifically precise.
Those who attain positions of privilege would naturally like to believe that
they have earned their privileges. They are more receptive to ideas and
people that tell them so. In plain language, the phenomenon is called flattery.
There is always an undercurrent of flattery in institutions of higher
education, but it intensifies when academics become more uncertain about the
intellectual weight of their positions. The rise of flattery is a symptom of
decay.
I possess a higher education (and gobs of post-graduate professional
experience) and have been unemployed for four and a half years in spite of
an exhaustive and imaginative search. I firmly believe that my experience of
unemployment allows me to be more creative in addressing the issue of
unemployment. Unfortunately, it also makes me less eager to flatter those
who desperately need assurance that their privileges have been "earned".
Especially when they can't coherently explain precisely how they've earned them.
Regards,
Tom Walker
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