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I'm surprised by how many people assume you're posting in bad faith. Maybe it's because we've talked one on one, but I'm pretty convinced these are your real opinions.
Also, just for some context, these opinions are pretty bog standard for the vast majority of elites in the West over the last few hundred years. So it's not like they're crazy beyond the pale. Although I'll admit they're stated provacatively.
All that being said, I strongly disagree. My main disagreement stems from the way modern society is set up. When you create a distinction like 'elite' versus 'stupid peasant' there's an inherent assumption that the way we currently order society and assign social status is somehow correct or right. I strongly disagree with that assumption.
Our modern world order vastly overweighs 'rational,' left-brained, rules-following, logical types of intelligence. While at the same time totally disregarding and not rewarding intuition, vibes-fluency, social skills, grasping of the gestalt, right-brained thinking, religious thinking, et cetera. This situation is extremely problematic.
As others have said, if we had a society that promoted a more balanced, virtuous person to elite status, that would be cool and elitism would be more justifiable.
And while yes left-brained type thinking leads to extreme power over the natural world, it's all useless as hell if we can't actually get along with each other, or live happy productive lives. And right now most can't. I think that the vast majority of 'peasants' actually are much more in tune with their intuition than the majority of elites. They have to be because they don't have the intelligence to rely on. And the vibes are shit right now, my dude. Mainly because those in power don't care about the vibes at all and think they're pointless BS.
Anyway, while I can sympathize with your point a bit, I think you're missing a big part of the picture.
Really? I've always thought the opposite. We generally reward those who are likeable, who are able to get other people on their side. Anyone in a leadership role, for example, needs to have people skills, not the sharpest analytical mind. Isn't it the perennial complaint of the wage slave that those at the top only got there by being smooth talkers or getting chummy with the powerful?
Also you seem to conflate right-brained thinking with being "virtuous", which I find odd. The two seem unrelated.
I think virtue is a balance of the two, or at least a balance is necessary to become virtuous. Therefore if someone is more right-brained in a left-brained society, they are likely closer to virtue.
That being said just being right-brained on it's own isn't virtuous.
In terms of historical human life, we are skewed far towards rationality. We aren't, in fact, entirely left-brained because as you point out, we tend to make decisions in a right-brained way anyway. Ian McGilchrist's book The Master and His Emissary talks about this, but basically the right brain is the more emotional center, and emotions tend to control our decision making no matter how rational we think we're being.
But when you try to force everything into a rational lens, you end up with a lot of problems.
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I don't have an exhaustive understanding of the UK but it sounds like he's expressing the median Londoner's opinion, candidly.
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I've read a lot of books from the last few hundred years, and heard a lot of stories from my grandparents about what it was like growing up, and I've never once seen them sneering at the British working class. There was a status hierarchy, and probably a certain amount of selective obliviousness about how that hierarchy was kept in place, but in general it would never occur to the aristocrats of that time to sneer at working-class people for being working class. What else should they be? The elites of that time were Christians and believed that everyone had their role to play in society.
It's only postwar, when social mobility became possible and then expected, that you start seeing sneering like @BurdensomeCount. And even then, only really in the last 20 years as mass immigration and wokeness took off (and the economy died). When I was growing up the working class were treated with great respect. There was sneering at scroungers, but that was the working class sneering at those who couldn't be bothered to work.
There is also the memory of postwar socialism to consider. The socialist government made a concerted and largely successful* attempt to destroy the aristocracy and the capitalists, and those who remain aren't going to forget that in a hurry. My parents had bricks thrown at them in the 70s and they definitely haven't forgotten.
*The upper classes are still over-represented in positions of influence, but not as the upper class. It's the difference between, say, a plutocratic society where powerful people inherit companies, and a plutocratic society where powerful people get expensive volunteering opportunities to garnish their CVs.
Okay this is totally fair. Bog standard was a bit too much.
But this strain of eugenics type thinking has been around in intellectual circles for a few hundred years. Intellectual weren't always in charge of the elite class though, you're right.
I come out in hives whenever I try to read anything by the Bloomsbury group, so I wouldn't really know. I got the impression that the eugenicists were interested in making the working class better for its own sake to some degree, rather than just swapping it out for the highest-IQ people around, but I might well be wrong about that.
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As an American who lived in London for a bit, I met several people who seemed completely identical to the rest of the English at first-blush[1], but they'd eventually confess to me that they're quite ashamed of their obvious(??) working class upbringing. The forward-ness of this surprised me, because I had many English acquaintances who would never open up about their feelings like this on other topics, no matter how much we were drinking. I do wonder if being an outsider helped them confess this to me, or if this is just something you have to voice to everyone.
Anyway, it sounded markedly different from meeting someone from the Midwest in NYC confessing their shame at growing up in corn fields of Indiana or whatever. The person from the Midwest just felt good to be in NYC, like they escaped. Whereas the persons I met in London very much projected that they could never escape their class, and this deeply affected them.
Can this shame lead to rage as this down-trodden feeling class is apparently ignored while the government falls all over itself to support problematic foreigners? I can see that, 100%
I think it's fair to say that the working class are usually much more emotionally open that the upper and middle classes, and are the subject of alternating envy and disapproval for that reason. It's certainly true for the people I knew.
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Fascinating, my experience has been middle class people insisting that they're working class.
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You've read a lot of books and I read a comment on Saltburn... The gist is random redditor claims that it isn't unheard of for middle class kids to pretend to be working class because it carries more favor with the elite kids.
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I have no doubt that these are his real opinions. But the sincerity of one's convictions doesn't preclude one from posting in bad faith.
Count's posts on race/immigration are designed to be maximally inflammatory while not technically violating any rules, in an effort to provoke banworthy responses from other users. It's a more rhetorically elaborate version of "I'm not touching you". Even if that's not his conscious intent, that's certainly the effect it has. That's where the accusations of bad faith posting come from.
Personally I feel it's important that minority viewpoints be protected on TheMotte however. There's nothing about Count's viewpoint in the abstract that's against the rules. So the best thing that people can do is simply not take the bait, and only report posts that contain actual rule violations.
People openly call for murder charges against abortionists here with no censure. Talking shit about native working class uk citizens though? That is beyond the pale for some reason?
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It literally does.
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I don’t see what’s bad faith about it if he honestly believes what he is saying. Count posted a basic argument in favor of anti-populist forced racial integration. It’s not a great argument; it can be attacked pretty easily, but it is structurally sound. It’s not a fringe opinion either. Lots of people believe the things that Count is saying for the reasons that Count gives.
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