The same fallacy recurs in the truth-out piece as in Mike G's 1%
elite. Mike S's 19% are no more uniform in detailed culture than the
1% was. In any advanced country today there are anything up to a
dozen spccialized power groups which are hovering around and
influencing the main economic decisions of the formal signatories
(the government group). These, be it noted, more or less continuously
have the ear of one or more government ministers (compared with
commercial lobby groups which come and go adventitiously according to
the particular privileges they are seeking). (Lobby groups spring
from the corporate world mainly -- and their leaders come from a wide
variety of early backgrounds.) The dozen or so I'm talking about
generally share the same culture (due to private education and
preferential access to elite universities)vis-a-vis the 80-class but
their specific cultures will be distinct according to individual
abilities, the specific schools and universities they went to, their
early career opportunities.
While the dozen or so groups comprising the 19% are constantly
seething in mutual competition in order to influence government
decisions, they certainly don't hold the others in contempt. At
least. most of them don't, being aware of the abilities and expertise
of the others. I can immediately think of three specialized groups
(the army chiefs, investment bankers in recent years, politicians)
which fit into the fraternities and sororities background almost
perfectly but not others which certainly didn't when their members
were at university (top civil servants, the scientific [fast-rising
in influence but which is still relatively recent], creative artists).
Keith
At 07:58 01/08/2012, Mike wrote:
Relevant to Keith's 20/80 demographic split, here's a piece that casts
some light on where the 1% gets the other 19% needed as
well-remunerated support for the 1%'s power and life style:
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10590-the-ruling-elite-and-the-perversion-of-scholarship
From the article:
Hazing, comradeship and complicity in sexual abuse, including rape,
make up the glue that holds campus sports teams and fraternity houses
together. The National Study of Student Hazing reports that 73 percent
of U.S. fraternities and sororities haze. [....] Hazing weeds out
those with enough self-esteem and independence to stand up to the
hierarchy. It ensures conformity and obedience. These groups are, in
essence, self-selected. Those who have the fortitude and courage to
oppose their own public humiliation and the public humiliation
perpetuated with each new cycle of recruits or pledges leave. Those
who remain conform.
[snip]
The corporate world sees football players, fraternity brothers and
sorority sisters as prime recruits. They have been conditioned to join
the team, to surrender moral autonomy, to accept and carry out acts of
personal humiliation, to treat with contempt those who oppose them or
who are different, to define their life by an infantile narcissism
centered on greed and self-promotion and to remain silent about crimes
they witness or take part in. It is the very ethic of corporations.
The ruling elite sees in Greek organizations and football programs the
training ground for the amoral class of speculators, bankers and
corporatists who pillage the country.
[snip]
Corporate culture, which now dominates higher education, shares the
predatory culture of the military. These cultures are about subsuming
the self into the herd. They are about the acquiring of technical,
vocational skills to serve the system. And with the increasing budget
cuts, and more craven obsequiousness to corporate donors, it will only
get worse. These forces of conformity are hostile to the humanities
that teach students to question assumptions and structures, that prod
them to seek a life of meaning and an ethical code that challenges the
blind, utilitarian obedience to power and profit that corporations and
the military instill.
I was more or less aware of this when I was in school, especially
reinforced by a happenstance encounter at an Amherst fraternity. But
I never thought clearly of it in systemic terms.
FWIW,
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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