Mediocrity and Equality

There was an interesting op-ed by Peter Saunders, in The Australian today. Peter's article decries what he sees as a spirit of mediocrity holding back modern society.

Elitism should not be a dirty word

WHEN 19th century liberals such as John Stuart Mill made the case for extending individual liberties, they argued it on moral grounds. They believed human beings are put on Earth with talents and potentials which they are meant to develop and exploit to the full, so they urged us to improve ourselves by becoming better educated and more enlightened. To achieve this, they understood we needed to be free.

Notwithstanding the empirically false claim that there is no real inequality of opportunity anymore, this article makes some good points about the under appreciation of expertise and excellence in modern society. However, its attempt to attribute this malaise to some nebulous idea of PC egalitarianism is unconvincing at best.

Sure, we've all met people who hold wishy-washy beliefs about equality, and their beliefs may even be considered dangerous in the aggregate, but such anecdotes are a far cry from an adequate causal explanation. In trying to blame the entire culture of mediocrity on strawman hippies, Saunders not only grossly exaggerates their influence, he actively ignores more powerful and obvious explanations. For whatever the effect of this type of servile egalitarianism on our current culture, it is beyond doubt that the value of excellence can be retarded in other ways.

For instance, can there really be any doubt that the rise of anti-intellectualism, and vapid individualism, as assiduously cultivated by conservative politicians and shock jocks, has been harmful to political discourse? Years of investment, by the conservative movement, in trying to inoculate their agenda against the critiques of academics and intellectuals, whilst revelling in the politics of demagogy, has had a profound impact on shaping how we view excellence. Their politicisation of the public service, science and humanities has altered the public's trust and respect for the old intellectual classes, in the same way as their continual affirmation of the individual as a mercenary has altered how much we expect from each other and ourselves. Nowadays, these once revered gatekeepers are mocked as being "limousine liberals," "chaimpaign socialists" or "liberal elites" who are out of touch with the respectable middle.

Somehow, Saunders manages to aim his umbrage squarely at the symptoms of this false individualism, such as the superficial culture of celebrity and television programs like Big Brother, without finding any blame in the pathogen itself. He talks of a privilege focused culture, which doesn't demand more, but just cannot bring himself to make the connection between this state of affairs and the view of the indiviudal as self-made and obligation-less, which has been nurtured by his side of politics. Rather, it is "egalitarianism," and nothing else, which is to blame.

Saunders' exaltation of sport as the last bastion of celebrated excellence is another example of him missing the forest for the trees. For whatever the benefits of sport, and there are many, it cannot be denied that public obsession with sport, to the exclusion of all else, is soporific to informed political engagement. Far from being a pure expression of uncompromised excellence, that kind of imbalance simply reflects a public sphere which is calibrated wrongly, whereby the focus on one specific type of achievement effectively excludes other forms of meaningful excellence.

The end of the column does provide a good laugh though. Saunders finishes his piece by appealing to the wisdom of John Stuart Mill, which is meant to lend support to his crusade for rugged individualism. This would be all nice and authoratitive, of course, except for the small problem that Mill was a parliamentary liberal socialist, who explicitly rejected libertarian beliefs such as Saunders'. Indeed, if he was to roll in his grave about anything, it would probably be the thin vision of the individual offered as panacea here, and the soft treatment which is given to those who have done the real harm to our political discourse.