So, last year I graduated from a second masters degree. There is nothing you can learn on a masters degree that you cannot learn on your own, Ben Franklin, Abe Lincoln, Socrates, and many other wise men had less a middle school education. Even if we look to our own time, actors and directors like Quentin Tarantino and Michael J Fox started working without a high school diploma.
I knew this before starting my degee, so why did I do it? It gives you a framework. You can read a bunch of songs in magazines, a bunch of poems as individual sheets, but a book can put them together for you. A degree puts books together for you, and creates a kind of community to discuss them with. Who’s paying for this expensive book club with a fancy piece of paper at the end? Why do we finance these things if people can just organise their own learning?
Well, one thing a degree gives you is it pushes you to read works that you otherwise might ignore. Or, its structure encourages you to ignore details and go on to the next thing. It is like hiring a tour guide for your learning, in most cases, for your reading and essay writing.
And where does that take me? This degree had me read a lot of texts by “great writers.” Only, the works were mediocre. They just illustrated a point, and had a name brand attached. Every brand has a recall when they create a falty product, every brand except a dead writer. Almost every writer creates a dud or two. For some, like Shakespeare, these works are lost, or their authorship is doubted. For others, who release a poem, short story or song almost every week, it’s easy to find a mediocre work.
And, the AI, the teaching assistant, or the instructor decides to use some of these works. “Look, Tolstoy wrote this, and it says how I feel, let’s include it in the syllabus.” Sure, it carries the Tolstoy brand, but it reads more like a first draft. Or like the dregs left over after a great story.
We saw many such works. Some might have been great in the original, just poorly translated. Others were never good to begin with.
This is why I don’t have a favorite artist, a favorite actor, a favorite writer, a favorite director. If I say I do, you’ll show me the work he made when he suffered from insomnia, the unfinished draft she wrote when she was too tired to proofread, the AI compilation of their worst works that copies their styles but leaves out their genius.
Unless a writer only has one surviving work, then I am not sure I want to see all their works. Reknowned actor Bela Lugosi ended up working with Ed Wood to make the worst film of all time. Talent does not guarantee a masterwork, it doesn’t even guarantee mediocrity.
But even when they have a great work, there is no great work that has not been taking out of context to mean the exact opposite of what the writer intended.
And, even a great writer, in a great work, can say some mediocre, false, or stupid things.
I found a very interesting article about Iceland.
Iceland is Reputed to be Happy and Safe. So Why Is Violent Crime On The Rise?
Okay, I have trouble copying the capitalisation. I don’t think that is the writer’s fault, I think the software does that. I found it a very interesting account of how crime rates are rising in Iceland. There are some great quotable lines in there, “Maybe we are bad at self-assessing our happiness. I mean, in 2022 Iceland also had the highest consumption rate of antidepressants in Europe. Maybe we’re not happy, we’re just high.” Wow, here is an interesting conclusion that still makes me want to read more.
What got me is that the story seems to be in favor of equality, or equity. After criticisng the right wingers, it makes a big mistake at the end. It quotes “historian” Will Durant completely out of context. Will Durant is more of an ultra-conservative philosopher who selects and distorts history to fit his worldview than a historian. Durant would be more in line with Thatchers, “society is just made up of individual men and women” than the text quoting him seems to realise.
Durant did indeed write, “Freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.” But, he was criticising the Soviet Union’s attack on freedom.
Here are some other Will Durant quotes from the same work which look very Thatcherite. Or even seem to scream, “Who is John Galt!”
“Inequality is not only natural and inborn, it grows with the complexity of civilization.”
“If we knew our fellow men thoroughly we could select thirty per cent of them whose combined ability would equal that of all the rest.”
Or, let’s get to the Animal Farm sounding bit. “Since wealth is an order and procedure of production and exchange rather than an accumulation of (mostly perishable) goods, and is a trust (the “credit system”) in men and institutions rather than in the intrinsic value of paper money or checks, violent revolutions do not so much redistribute wealth as destroy it. There may be a redivision of the land, but the natural inequality of men soon re-creates an inequality of possessions and privileges, and raises to power a new minority with essentially the same instincts as in the old.”
Let’s see what Durant really thinks. “Even when repressed, inequality grows; only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom; and in the end superior ability has its way.”
Now, Durant and Thatcher don’t look that different, do they? If you read Thatcher’s treaty where she allegedly said “there is no such thing as society” you have a feeling that she and Durant are on the same page of the same book, with the same interpretation and the same opinion.
Like Durant, Thatcher was criticizing socialism. Like Durant, Thatcher saw education as the only way to allow true genius to shine through, making education reforms to allow individuals with talent or potential to rise above poverty.
In other words, they are either both right or both wrong.
I disagree with both of them. Both believe in the supremacy of the individual, the person, the great person. For them, the system merely needs to get out of the way of greatness.
To me, I believe that there are great works. The worker needs to get out of his own way. The system needs to have an infrastructure in place to support that work. Neither Thatcher or Will Durant owned a printing press, both benefited from millenia of scientific, political, and social innovations that created societies that allowed their works.
Neither was a total individualist. While Durant spoke of interdependence, Thatcher did give credit to many different professions, especially the military.
My point is this. Just because a famous person, or well liked person, said something, that doesn’t mean there is an ounce of truth to it. Or relevance. There may be. When we seek out great works, we might care about the moral character of the person who created those works. We might care about what they did before. But we shouldn’t trust something as great just because of the brand name.