/lit/ - Literature

The Revolt of the Elites by Christopher Lasch

> The latest variation on this familiar theme, its reductio ad absurdum, is that a respect for cultural diversity forbids us to impose the standards of privileged groups on the victims of oppression. This is so clearly a recipe for universal incompetence (or at least for a disastrous split between the competent classes and the incompetent) that it is rapidly losing whatever credibility it may have had when our society (because of its abundance of land and other natural resources, combined with its chronic shortage of labor) offered a more generous margin for incompetence. The mounting evidence of widespread inefficiency and corruption, the decline of American productivity, the pursuit of speculative profits at the expense of manufacturing, the deterioration of our country’s material infrastructure, the squalid conditions in our crime-ridden cities, the alarming and disgraceful growth of poverty, and the widening disparity between poverty and wealth, which is morally obscene and politically explosive as well—these developments, the ominous import of which can no longer be ignored or concealed, have reopened the historic debate about democracy.

> Unless we are prepared to make demands on one another, we can enjoy only the most rudimentary kind of common life.

>>13140388
This might be of interest to you.

t. very high iq